The Eleventh Day

54 “Every Muslim”: ed. Lawrence, 87.

55 Rohrabacher: speech, 5/5/04, USA Today, 9/18/01. Rohrabacher, a Republican who was elected to Congress in 1989, is a controversial figure. Given the corroborative accounts that follow, however, this story about bin Laden is credible (controversial: e.g., “Rogue Statesman,” www.ocweekly.com, 9/5/02, Telegraph (U.K.), 9/13/08);

56 Girardet: National Geographic, 12/1/01, In the Footsteps of Bin Laden, CNN, 8/23/06;

57 Simpson: John Simpson, Simpson’s World, NY: Miramax, 2003, 82–, Telegraph (U.K.), 9/16/01, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 65.

58 “vanguard”/“al qaeda”: Bergen, OBL I Know, 75, Gunaratna, 3–;

59 discussed plans: “TAREEKHOSAMA/​50/​Tareekh Osama,” minutes of meeting 8/11/88, INTELWIRE, Coll, Bin Ladens, 336–, Bergen, OBL I Know, 74–, Wright, 131–, Burke, 1–, ed. Lawrence, 108.

60 never heard/first used: Flagg Miller, “Al-Qaeda as a ‘Pragmatic Base,’ ” Language & Communications, Vol. 28, 2008, “On ‘The Summit of the Hindu Kush’: Osama bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War Reconsidered,” speech by Flagg Miller, supplied to authors, int. Huthaifa Azzam, 2006, courtesy Paladin InVision. Only in 1996 did a CIA report refer to “al-Qaeda.” The word was first used by the State Department in 1998 (ed. Lawrence, 108fn);

61 “He rang”: Lacey, Inside the Kingdom, 148;

62 “playing”: Rashid, Taliban, 129;

63 “I mentioned”: Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East, London: Simon & Schuster, 2008, 410. Bhutto said she first heard of bin Laden in 1989, when told he had bribed members of parliament to vote against her in a no-confidence motion. In 2008, after Bhutto’s assassination, a newspaper editor in Pakistan claimed to have been present when bin Laden tried to bribe then–Pakistan Muslim League party leader—later prime minister—Nawaz Sharif to see that the no-confidence motion was tabled. The newspaper editor had reportedly himself been prosecuted on a separate matter, and the authors have seen no corroboration of this allegation (Bhutto, 405–, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 61, Coll, Ghost Wars, 212, Daily Frontier Post [Pakistan], 7/1/01, & see Reeve, 171, 179).

64 Zawahiri: Wright, 128, 139–, Bergen, OBL I Know, 203, 319–, int. Huthaifa Azzam, 2006, courtesy PaladinInVision;

65 Rahman: bin Ladens & Sasson, 130–, Wright 138, Bergen, OBL I Know, 68;

66 Mohammed: McDermott, 121, Financial Times, 2/15/03, Bergen, OBL I Know, 300;

67 Yousef: Reeve, 120, Miller & Stone, 78, Newsday, 4/16/95, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 138;

68 Atta: McDermott, 15–, CR, 160;

69 Hanjour/Jarrah/Shehhi: eds. Der Spiegel, 253–, McDermott, 50, The Independent (U.K.), 9/16/01;

70 “concerned, sad”: Wright, 75–.

71 “to reclaim”: Bergen, Scheuer, OBL I Know, 15, Osama bin Laden, 77. Suggestions that Palestine was not an issue for bin Laden do not appear well founded. It appears true, however, that he neither directed terrorist attacks on Israeli targets nor supplied funds to Palestinian groups. The Palestinian author and journalist Abdel Bari Atwan, who interviewed him in 1996, said Palestine “wasn’t actually No. 1 on his agenda … he wasn’t really that informed about Palestine. He didn’t like Yasser Arafat … maybe because he was involved with the Soviets … used to be considered an unbeliever.” For obvious reasons, organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been careful not to associate their groups with bin Laden (not a genuine: e.g., Gold, 10; Atwan: int., 2007; Hamas, etc.: Burke, 12).

72 boycott: bin Ladens & Sasson, 61, 110, ed. Lawrence, 115;

73 not drink: bin Ladens & Sasson, 60, Bergen, OBL I Know, 39.

74 “The Americans”: ed. Lawrence, 115. Recalling this speech in an interview after 9/11, bin Laden said it occurred in 1986. Author Lawrence Wright, in his book The Looming Tower, cites a speech with almost identical wording that he made in 1990. That speech did not mention Palestine (ed. Lawrence, 115, Wright, 151, 405n);

75 time and again: e.g., ed. Lawrence, 9, 36, McDermott, 253–, CBS News, 5/16/08.

76 “America allowed”/“The idea”: Lawrence, 239. Then–U.S. secretary of state Alexander Haig was to insist that the United States was not a party to the Israeli invasion. Others, including the military correspondent for Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, have said Washington gave Israel “the green light” (Haig: Business Week, 2/20/10; others: Foreign Policy, Spring 1983, Fisk, The Great War, 1037);

77 “The events”: MSNBC, 11/29/07.

CHAPTER 19

1

stocked up/despised Saddam/“will attack”:

bin Ladens & Sasson, 79–, Coll,

Bin Ladens

, 373, Bergen,

OBL I Know

, 179;

2

“The defense”:

David Ottoway, “The U.S. and Saudi Arabia Since the 1930s,”

Foreign Policy Research Institute

, 8/09;

3

“If you ask”:

William Simpson,

The Prince

, NY: Regan, 2006, 205;

4

delegation:

ibid., 209–, Richard Clarke, 57–;

5

“flooding”:

H. Norman Schwarzkopf with Peter Petre,

It Doesn’t Take a Hero

, NY: Bantam, 1992, 353;

6

“This is something”:

int. Prince Amr ibn Mohammad al-Faisal,

Frontline:

“House of Saud,”

www.pbs.org

;

7

religious study/“the last”:

excerpts,

Frontline:

“Saudi Time Bomb,”

www.pbs.org

;

8

Committee raids:

Felice Gaer et al., “Report on Saudi Arabia,” U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Washington, D.C., 5/2/03;

9

Censors:

bin Ladin, 63;

10 hall/phone recordings: New Yorker, 1/5/05;

11 Bible: WSJ, 5/20/05;

12 “The unbelievers”: ed. Nina Shea, “Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques,” Center for Religious Freedom, Washington, D.C., 1/28/05;

13 debate/Abdullah urged: Rachel Bronson, Thicker than Oil, NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006, 194, Posner, Secrets, 135–;

14 “Okay”: William Simpson, 209;

15 female soldiers/​entertainers/​carols/​Sabbath/​Bibles/​Ramadan: Schwarzkopf, 386–, 430, 461–, William Simpson, 225–;

16 “Pollution”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 84;

17 OBL meetings/​Sultan/​“kept asking”: MFR 04019365, 2/24/04, Snell et al. to Zelikow, “Summary of Interviews Conducted in Saudi Arabia,” 2/25/04, CF, Arab News, 11/7/01, bin Ladens & Sasson, 82–, ed. Lawrence, 257; Prince Sultan is the father of long-time Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar (William Simpson, 12);

18 “didn’t care”: MFR 04019365, 2/24/04;

19 “Don’t call”: transcript, Frontline: “House of Saud,” 11/23/04, www.pbs.org;

20 OBL outraged/​“colony”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 83–;

21 5,000 remained/bases: Alfred Prados, “Saudi Arabia, Current Issues and U.S. Relations,” Foreign Affairs, Defense & Trade Division, Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., 9/15/03, “Desert Stronghold,” Air Force Magazine, 2/99, BBC News, 4/29/03.

22 groundswell: NYT, 3/7/04, Gold, 161, Yemen: int. of Abdul Bari Atwan for PaladinInVision, 2006, Miller & Stone, 158–, Lacey, Inside the Kingdom, 155;

23 passport/movements: Lacey, Inside the Kingdom, Atwan, 161;

24 cleared: CR, 57;

25 “One day”/business: bin Ladens & Sasson, 85;

26 conference: Coll, Ghost Wars, 231–;

27 “We didn’t say”: int. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Frontline: “Looking for Answers,” www.pbs.org.

28 “the U.S. government”: Coll, Ghost Wars, 231. Bin Laden himself would reportedly claim that, far from the Saudis having asked to protect him, the regime asked the intelligence services in Pakistan—his first stop on leaving his homeland—to kill him. (NYT, 1/14/01);

29 “using the”: Scheuer, Osama bin Laden, 83, 218n27.

30 “pledge”: Wright, 161. The PBS Frontline program, meanwhile, obtained a document stating that an unnamed bin Laden brother persuaded Naif’s younger brother, Deputy Interior Minister Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz, to lift the travel ban while Naif was out of the country (Prince Ahmed: Documents supplied to Frontline by an associate of OBL, “Hunting bin Laden,” www.pbs.org).

31 “with help”: CR, 57. On the purported help from a “dissident” royal family member, the sources the Commission cited were self-confessed 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and fellow terrorist Tawfiq bin Attash—under interrogation after their capture—and bin Laden associate Jamal al-Fadl, who defected in 1996. (CR, 57, 467n33).

32 “Go to Sudan”: Reeve, 172;

33 property: Bergen, Holy War Inc., 78;

34 wives/motorcade/guest: bin Ladens & Sasson, 94, Burke, 143–;

35 Khartoum houses/no pictures/austerity: bin Ladens & Sasson, 94–, 107–, 111–, Bergen, OBL I Know, 123;

36 “You know”: int. Jamal Khashoggi for Paladin InVision, 2006;

37 no air conditioning: bin Ladens & Sasson, 115, Los Angeles Times, 12/19/09;

38 no education for girls: bin Ladens & Sasson, 109–;

39 more time: ibid., 96;

40 “wooden cane”: ibid., 116;

41 apoplectic/“Why do”: ibid., 164;

42 “My husband”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 97;

43 “agriculturalist”: The Independent (U.K.), 12/6/93;

44 training/plotting: MFR 04013804, 12/4/04, Staff Statement 15, CO;

45 “Jihad”: Burke, 73–;

46 “every place”: ed. Lawrence, 49.

47 Yousef Philippines: Fouda & Fielding, 94, Maria N. Ressa, Seeds of Terror, NY: Free Press, 2003, 26;

48 Yousef names: statement by Michael McCurry, U.S. Dept. of State, 7/23/93, Reeve, 112.

49 “emissary”: Zachary Abuzza, “Belik Terrorism: The Return of the Abu Sayyaf,” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 9/05. The source of the “emissary from bin Laden” quote was Edwin Angeles, a Philippines government agent who penetrated the separatist group. Angeles is variously described as having been an “undercover agent for the Defense Intelligence Group in the Philippines’ Defense Department”—penetrating the Abu Sayyaf group—or a defector. The Abu Sayyaf group launched some seventy attacks between 1991 and 1995, killed about 136 people and injured hundreds (“Balik-Terrorism: The Return of the Abu Sayyaf,” WP, 6/5/95, Marites Dañguilan Vitug & Glenda M. Gloria, Under the Crescent Moon, Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo Center for Social Policy, 2000, 198–, 205).

50 on behalf of Rahman: WP, 6/5/95;

51 OBL would claim: ed. Lawrence, 53.

CHAPTER 20

1

twenties/​lean/​degrees/​“hard-working”:

Lance,

1000 Years

, 9, 460n19,

The Times

(London), 10/18/97;

2

“poised”/languages:

Statement of Thomas Pickard, 4/13/04, CO;

3

political/​“Palestinian”/​“the right”:

The Times

(London), 10/18/97, Reeve, 125, 127, Bergen,

OBL I Know

, 145;

4

explosives/​“Chemist”:

Bergen,

OBL I Know

, Abuzza, “Belik Terrorism”;

5

phone call:

U.S. v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al

.

6

“Boom!”:

McDermott, 130. The friend, Abdul Murad, was later to become deeply involved in Yousef’s plotting and later—once captured—talked at length. The “chocolate” story is from the record of an FBI interview (FBI 302 of int. Abdul Hakim Ali Murad, 5/11/95, “Various Interrogation Reports,” B24, T1, CF).

7

“break”/“exploding”:

U.S. v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al.

, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd District, 189 F.3d 88, 8/16/99, “The Muslim Interfaith Charade,” 5/6/08,

www.militantislammonitor.org

, Daniel Benjamin & Steven Simon,

The Age of Sacred Terror

, NY: Random House, 2003, 6–. Heavy with implication as they are, one cannot read too much into the Blind Sheikh’s remarks. In captivity, Yousef would insist

that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was his idea and his alone. His contact Abdul Murad, for his part, would reportedly claim he proposed the bombing—after Yousef asked him to suggest a suitable “Jewish” target (McDermott, 130, Lance,

1000 Years

, 199, Peter Lance,

Triple Cross

, NY: Regan, 2006, 121);

8

“targeting”:

Village Voice

, 3/30/93.

9

flew NY/​passports/​suspicions/​asylum:

Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Travel, CO,

The Times

(London), 10/18/97, MFR 04020564, 3/22/04. The accomplice was Ahmad Ajaj. He would remain incarcerated until Yousef’s attempt to bring down the Twin Towers in February 1993, was later tried as an accomplice, and is serving a life sentence (Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Travel,” CO).

10 Al Khifa contact: The contact at the Al Khifa center was Mahmoud Abouhalima, an Egyptian-born veteran Yousef had reportedly known in Afghanistan. Yousef’s principal accomplices in the weeks that followed were Mohammad Salameh, a Palestinian whose grandfather and uncle had served time in Israeli prisons, Nidal Ayyad, a chemical engineer—like Yousef born in Kuwait—and a Jordanian named Eyad Ismoil. There was no hard evidence to implicate Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, but he was charged in the summer of 1993 with conspiring with others to commit bombings of other New York landmarks (Reeve, 143, 114, 62, Village Voice, 3/30/93, U.S. v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., S5 93 Cr. 181, 1/17/96).

11 Yousef acquired/​loaded/​rented/​escape: Reeve, 6–, 24–, 36–, Burke, 101;

12 “largest”: Reeve, 154;

13 earthquake/“like Christmas tree”/​devastation/​elevators/​dead: ibid., 10–, 13–, 15;

14 “Achilles’ heel”: New Yorker, 3/30/93;

15 bring down Tower: NYT, 6/9/02, Wright, 178;

16 “Liberation”/“The American”/“Our calculations”/phoned in: Lance, Triple Cross, 116, Burke, 111, WP, 9/13/01.

17 tracked down/identified: Reeve, 39–, 42–, 56, U.S. v. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef et al., U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, 8/01, CR, 72–.

18 plot new mayhem: In July 1993, five months after attacking the World Trade Center, Yousef tried to bomb the home of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto, then a candidate for prime minister. He suffered a serious eye injury when the detonator exploded, and spent months recovering. By early 1994 he was in Thailand and again preparing a bomb attack—on the Israeli embassy. That attack also failed at the last moment, when an accomplice crashed the van carrying the bomb to the target. Yousef mulled attacking President Bill Clinton, either with explosives or a rocket, when he visited Manila in November 1994. The following month, with Pope John Paul due to arrive in the city, he prepared a number of pipe bombs. He and accomplice Abdul Murad had already purchased priest’s clothing, Bibles, and crucifixes—as cover for those carrying the bombs to the target—when police raided their bomb factory (see text) (Bhutto: Reeve, 50–, 69, Vitug & Gloria, 231; Thailand: Reeve, 63–; Clinton: Reeve, 76–, CNN, 8/25/98; John Paul: Ressa, 31–, Reeve, 78, 85–).

19 Pope/“Just some”/“Saeed” arrest: WP, 12/30/01.

20 tortured/“Agents hit”: Vitug & Gloria, 223, McDermott, 153. The reporters were Marites Dañguilan Vitug, who has reported for Newsweek and The Christian Science Monitor, and Glenda Gloria, who holds a master’s degree in political sociology from the London School of Economics. The reporting cited here is from the award-winning book on the Muslim rebellion in Mindanao, in the eastern Philippines. (Vitug & Gloria, 222–).

21 transcript: Murad Interrogation, 1/7/95, posted at www.thesmokinggun.com, & see NY Daily News, 7/24/96, Ressa, 39–;

22 Murad/“to blow up”/​summoned/​disguises/​watches: FBI 302 of int. Abdul Hakim Ali Murad, 5/11/95, “Various Interrogation Reports,” B24, T1, CF, Lance, 1000 Years, 259;

23 device in theater: Reeve, 77, Benjamin & Simon, 493, Lance, 1000 Years, 236–;

24 Italian/bomb: Lance, 1000 Years, 237–, Reeve, 78–;

25 Murad bomb/Parker pen/“cause”: FBI 302 of int. Abdul Hakim Ali Murad; United Flight 2: Philippine National Police (PNP) “After Debriefing Report,” 1/17/95;

26 11 airliners/terrorists: Reeve, 90–, 94–;

27 “TIMER”: WP, 12/20/01;

28 airlines alerted/grounded: Richard Clarke, 93–, MFR 04017178, 11/21/03, Lance, Triple Cross, 441;

29 4,000 could have died: Reeve, 90.

30 “BOJINKA”: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly told CIA interrogators after 9/11 that bojinka was not a Serbo-Croatian word for “big bang,” as reported—just “a nonsense word he adopted after hearing it on the front lines in Afghanistan.” The authors have been unable to pin down a meaning for the word in Serbo-Croat, but there is a Croatian word bočnica, meaning “boom” (explosion: Time, 1/1/95; loud bang: WP, 5/19/02; big bang: www.FrontPageMagazine.com, 5/20/02; boom: www.eudict.com; “a nonsense”: CR, 488n7).

31 Yousef arrested: Katz, 162–, 186–, Reeve, 101;

32 cooperative Bhutto: John Esposito, Political Islam, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1997, 150;

33 face trial: Reeve, 237;

34 Found guilty/“I am”: ibid., 242, CNN, 9/5/96, 11/12/97;

35 240 years: NYT, 4/5/03.

36 helicopter/​“See”: Coll, Ghost Wars, 272. This exchange has been described several times, with varying details. They are summarized by author Peter Lance in his book 1000 Years for Revenge, 298, 482n13;

37 prostrate: Lance, 1000 Years, 9–;

38 mastermind: Coll, Ghost Wars, 273, NYT, 4/12/95—citing Al Hayat; leaders inspired: Coll, Ghost Wars, 272.

39 “substantial”: Staff Statement 15, CO, Peter Lance, Cover-Up, NY: Regan, 2004, 209—the staff member was Douglas MacEachin;

40 camp: Corbin, 46–, Reeve, 120, Benjamin & Simon, 8, 503n14, Los Angeles Times, 9/11/02 & see Evan Kohlmann, “Expert Report I: U.S. v. Oussama Kassir,” 3/09;

41 “emissary”: Abuza, “Balik Terrorism”;

42 separatist: Time, 6/17/02, Reeve, 136, 156–;

43 manual: NYT, 1/14/01, 6/9/02, Lance, 1000 Years, 110;

44 calls: Reeve, 47–, Lance, 1000 Years, 234;

45 Beit Ashuhada: “Summary of Captioned Investigation as of 11/4/01,” PENTTBOM, 11/5/01, authors’ collection, Cooley, 102, “State Dept. Fact Sheet on Bin Laden,” 8/14/96 reprinted in Brisard & Dasquié, 169.

46 “good friend”/“trenches”: transcript int. of OBL for ABC News, Frontline: “Hunting bin Laden,” www.pbs.org, Miller & Stone, 138–, 189. The separatist leader with whom Yousef had early contact in the Philippines was Abdurajak Janjalani, the founder of the extremist Abu Sayyaf group. As identified in a previous note, the companion refused admission was Ahmad Ajaj. The Yousef accomplice who had fought with bin Laden was Wali Kahn Amin Shah (Reeve, 136, 156–, CR, 59).

47 Shaikha/​“Imagine”: CNN, 11/24/04, 9/24/06, Bergen, OBL I Know, 46–, Wright, 97–;

48 “missionary”: “Mohammad Khalifa’s Network in the Philippines,” in ed. J. M. Berger, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Vol. 1, INTELWIRE, 2007;

49 “philanthropist”: The Inquirer (Philippines), 1/22/07, Vitug & Gloria, 208, 213, 235–;

50 OBL Philippines: Ressa, 16;

51 spreading money: ibid., 27, 73, 107, 227n22, Christian Science Monitor, 2/1/02;

52 introduced Yousef: Ressa, 108;

53 left country/police report: Ressa, 10–, 16;

54 arrested: “Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Support for Motion re Return of Property,” Mohammad Jamal Khalifa v. U.S., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Cr 95–, in ed. Berger;

55 phone book: U.S. v. Benevolence International Foundation, Inc. et al., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 02 CR 0414, 4/29/02, in ed. Berger;

56 bomb factory: J. M. Berger, “Mohammad Jamal Khalifa: Life and Death Secrets,” 1/31/07, INTELWIRE;

57 explosives/weaponry: “In the Matter of Mohammad J. Khalifah, Respondent,” U.S. Dept. of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, A29–457–661, 3/10/95, in ed. Berger; Khalifa, entry for OBL: U.S. v. Benevolence International Foundation, Inc., et al.; card in suitcase/Khalifa alias: U.S. v. Benevolence International Foundation Inc., et al.; co-conspirator: ed. Berger, Khalifa, iii.

58 “alleged financier”: JI, Report, 128. The “alleged financier” reference also appears in a post-9/11 FBI report. A CIA investigation, the BBC was reportedly told by an agency interviewee in 1998, indicated that bin Laden was “Yousef’s principal financial backer.” The overall story of the way Khalifa was handled by U.S. authorities in 1995 remains complex and unsatisfactorily explained. His U.S. visa had been withdrawn on the ground that he had “engaged in terrorist activity,” not in the United States but in Jordan, where he had been convicted in absentia in connection with a bombing campaign. Khalifa was subsequently deported to Jordan, retried, and acquitted—though he admitted that he had known the bombers and sent them funds. Khalifa was then allowed to leave for Saudi Arabia. He claimed in interviews after 9/11, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that he and bin Laden had been estranged since the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Khalifa was killed by unknown assailants in Madagascar in 2007—days after Interpol had forwarded a bulletin on him to U.S. agencies. Relevant Interpol documents are heavily redacted. (“alleged financier”: “Summary of Captioned Investigation as of 11/4/01,” PENTTBOM, 11/5/01, authors’ collection; “Yousef’s principal”: Vitug & Gloria, 234; “engaged”: Mohammad Jamal Khalifah v. U.S., Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Support of Motion for Return of Property, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, CR 95–, 3/6/95; in absentia/​retried/​acquitted: ed. Berger, Khalifa, ii–; admitted: John Doe v. Al Baraka Investment & Development Corporation et al., Complaint, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; estranged: e.g. CNN, 9/2/07, Wright, 113; killed/Interpol: J. M. Berger, “U.S., Interpol Tracking Khalifa in Days Before Madagascar Murder,” 2/16/07, INTELWIRE).

59 never charged: ed. Berger, i.

60 clues/“Zahid”: Miller & Stone, 137, McDermott, 162.

61 Zahid uncle: Reeve, 48. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has long been described as Ramzi Yousef’s uncle. The most informative account, by journalist Terry McDermott and colleagues at the Los Angeles Times, concludes that he is the brother of Yousef’s mother, Hameda. Author Steve Coll writes that the CIA concluded that Mohammed is not only Yousef’s uncle, but that the two men’s wives are sisters. Absent documentation, the exact nature of their relationship remains elusive—Arabs sometimes use the word “uncle” loosely. Both men were apparently born in Kuwait to immigrant families from the Baluchistan region of southwest Pakistan. “I am Palestinian on my mother’s side,” Yousef told an Arab newspaper in 1995. “My grandmother is Palestinian” (uncle: e.g. Corbin, 47, Reeve, 91, Time, 6/17/02; informative: McDermott, 107–, 128, & see Fouda & Fielding, 88–; wives: Coll, Ghost Wars, 326; “I am Palestinian”: int. Yousef by Raghida Dergham, Al Hayat, 4/12/95 & see NYT, 4/12/95).

62 photos of OBL: Financial Times, 2/15/03.

63 no sign of either brother: KSM’s brother Zahid spent much of the 1990s in the United Arab Emirates, until being deported in 1998 for involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood. He was working as a business executive in Bahrain as of 2010 (New Yorker, 9/13/10).

64 Yousef many calls: Miller & Stone, 137, NBC News, 10/18/00;

65 call to KSM: CR, 147, 488n6;

66 Tiffany Mansions: McDermott, 144;

67 bar girls/phone: Ressa, 18–;

68 “Abdul Majid”/met in Pakistan/electronics business/“must have”: FBI 302 of int. Abdul Hakim Ali Murad, 5/11/95, “Various Interrogation Reports,” B24, T1, CF, CR, 147;

69 “I was”: “Verbatim Transcript ISN 10024”;

70 “idea”: “Substitution for the Testimony of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui; target CIA/WTC: CR, 153, 491n33.

71 “plan”: Philippines National Police, “After Debriefing Report,” 1/20/95. A 1995 FBI memo refers to Murad’s statement about attacking CIA HQ, but cites him as saying he would fly a plane filled with explosives into the building” (WP, 6/6/02, Coll, Ghost Wars, 278–, Lance, Triple Cross, 188, Appendix XI).

72 Mendoza: CNN, 9/18/01. Former CIA official and deputy director of the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, Larry Johnson, has characterized Mendoza’s assertions as “bullshit.” Contemporary Philippines police reports on the Murad interrogation, Johnson asserted in 2006—publishing copies of some of them—do not reflect questioning of Murad by Mendoza. Nor, he said, do they contain any reference to talk of flying airliners into buildings other than the CIA. Johnson wrote that author Peter Lance, who gave credence to Mendoza’s account in his books on 9/11, had been “sold a bill of goods.” Johnson, however, is himself a controversial character, said to have been instrumental in spreading a smear story about President Obama’s wife, Michelle. He has been mocked for having written a New York Times piece stating that “terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States”—two months before 9/11 (Larry Johnson, “Peter Lance’s Flawed Triple Cross,” 12/6/06, www.huffingtonpost.com, David Weigel, “Larry Johnson’s Strange Trip,” 6/24/08, www.prospect.org, Larry Johnson, “Whitey Tapes,” 10/21/08, www.noquarterusa.net, Time, 6/12/08).

73 “The targets”: “Investigating Terror,” CNN, 10/20/01, Ressa, 32—citing 9/16/01 int. of Tiglao.

74 Garcia/“selected targets”: Village Voice, 9/25/01, Rafael Garcia, “Decoding Bojinka,” Newsbreak (Philippines), 11/15/01, Fouda & Fielding, 99, Lance, Triple Cross, 185 & see “Authorities Told of Hijack Risks,” AP, 3/5/02. In other versions of his account, Garcia recalled that the computer file also named the Pentagon as a proposed target. “Murad,” Garcia wrote, “was to fly the plane that would be crashed into the CIA headquarters.” The subject of the computer, and other evidence on it, came up at Yousef’s trial in 1996. Defense attorneys sought unsuccessfully to challenge the evidence on the computer, alleging tampering (“Murad”: Rafael Garcia, “Decoding Bojinka,” Newsbreak [Philippines], 11/15/01, Village Voice, 9/25/01, Fouda & Fielding, 99; tampering?: NYT, 7/18/96, WP, 12/6/01).

75 “claims”: CR, 491n33;

76 FBI “effectively”: JI, Report, 9, 101–, 210;

77 “We shared”/“I believe”: Portsmouth Herald, 3/5/02, CNN, 3/14/02;

78 Mendoza insisted: Lance, 1000 Years, 282;

79 “We told”/“I still”: WP, 12/30/01.

80 Defense Dept. panel/​“Coming”/​“It was”: WP, 10/2/01 & see re not in published version “Terror 2000,” www.dod.gov.

CHAPTER 21

1

“You need”:

NYT

, 11/14/09—agent was Daniel Byman;

2

“manager”:

“Khalid Shaykh Muhammad: Preeminent Source on Al Qa’ida,” CIA, 7/13/04, released 2009;

3

“Khalid”/born Kuwait:

JI, Report, 30,

New Yorker

, 9/13/10;

4

imam/washed bodies:

Fox News, 3/14/07;

5

Palestinians:

McDermott, 109;

6

“so smart”/theater:

Financial Times

, 2/15/03,

New Yorker

, 9/13/10. KSM studied first at Chowan College, in Murfreesboro, then at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro. Also attending the latter college was Ramzi Yousef’s brother (New York to Counterterrorism, Charlotte, 6/10/02, FBI 265A-NY-252802, INTELWIRE, CR, 146);

7

Palestine/​prayers/​reproach:

New York to Counterterrorism, Charlotte, 6/10/02, FBI 265A-NY-252802, INTELWIRE, CR, 146, McDermott, 115–;

8

“racist”:

KSM, “Preeminent Source,” McDermott, 114–;

9

1987/Afghan conflict:

CR, 146. During the war, KSM became aide to Abdul Rasool Sayyaf, a former Kabul theology professor and an adherent to a form of Islam similar to the creed practiced in Saudi Arabia. Sayyaf, who lived for some time in Saudi Arabia, had links to bin Laden (Fouda & Fielding, 91);

10 one brother/two killed: CR, 488n5, Financial Times, 2/15/03;

11 KSM relatives: e.g. “KSM: Preeminent Source,” Staff Report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel,” CO, Time, 5/1/03, Reuters, 2/1/08, WP, 4/13/07, across world/Bosnia: CR, 488n5, Fouda & Fielding, 97, Al Jazeera, 5/5/03, McDermott, 175;

12 short/balding: Fouda & Fielding, 88, Los Angeles Times, 9/1/02, “Khaled Shaikh Mohammad,” information sheet for Rewards for Justice program, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Dept. of State;

13 employment: NY to National Security, Bangkok et al., FBI 265A-NY-252802, 7/8/99, INTELWIRE;

14 Thani: CR, 147–, 488n5;

15 indictment: ibid., 73.

16 tipped off/assisted flying out: The circumstances in which KSM was allowed to escape have been told in some detail by former CIA case officer Robert Baer, drawing on information given him in 1997 by former police chief Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Hamad al-Thani, then in exile in Syria. The Qatari fiasco has also been described by Richard Clarke, and—more circumspectly—by former FBI director Louis Freeh (Baer: Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil, NY: Three Rivers, 2003, 18, 190–, Robert Baer, See No Evil, NY: Three Rivers, 2002, 270; Freeh: Statement & Testimony of Louis Freeh, 4/13/04, CO & see CR, 147, 488n5, Staff Statement 5, CO, Bamford, Pretext, 164, Coll, Ghost Wars, 326–, 631n35).

17 anger: Richard Clarke, 152–;

18 $5 million/​“Armed”/​lookout: “Mohammad,” information sheet, FBI, INS Lookout Notice, 2/13/96, “KSM, FBI-INS Misc. Info.,” B11, T5, CF.

19 “al-Balushi”: CR, 276–. e.g., KSM’s nephew Ammar al-Baluchi (also of Baluchi nationality and otherwise known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali) was allegedly involved in transferring al Qaeda funds to the 9/11 hijackers; another example is senior al Qaeda military commander Abu Faraj al-Libi (the Libyan Mustafa al-’Uzayti). Both were among the group of U.S. captives known as High Value Detainees (“Detainee Biographies,” www.defense.gov);

20 visa/alias: Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Travel,” CO;

21 “recruiting”: CR, 255;

22 “Based on”: Statement of Eleanor Hill, 9/18/02, JI.

23 “failure”: Executive Summary, “CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks,” Office of the Inspector General, CIA, 6/05. Though a summary was made public after congressional pressure, the full inspector general’s 2005 “Report on CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks” has not been released. (“Executive Summary,” Central Intelligence Agency, Office of the Inspector General, 06/05, www.cia.gov, NYT, 10/5/05, AP, 5/18/07).

24 KSM capture: Fouda & Fielding, 181–, Tenet, 251–. Questions were raised as to the circumstances and timing of the arrest. The family of one of the men detained with KSM denied that the fugitive had been in the house. Some reports suggested he had been captured by Pakistani forces acting alone, others that it had been a joint U.S.-Pakistani operation. There were differing claims, too, as to who had custody of the suspect in the immediate aftermath. Red Cross staff and KSM’s own defense team, however, who interviewed the prisoner, have not apparently raised questions as to the timing and circumstances of the arrest (questions: e.g. Sunday Times [London], 3/9/03, NYT, 3/3/03, The Guardian [U.K.], 3/3/03, ABC News, 3/11/03, Fouda & Fielding, 181– & see Paul Thompson, “Is There More to the Capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than Meets the Eye?,” 3/4/03, www.historycommons.org; Red Cross/defense team: Red Cross Report, 5, 20, 33–, “Verbatim Transcript of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing for ISN 10024,” www.defense.gov);

25 “Nothing like”: Tenet, 252;

26 leads/$25 million: LAT, 3/2/03, Suskind, One Percent, 204–, Guardian (U.K.), 3/11/03, Tenet, 253;

27 “wonderful”/“hard”: LAT, 3/2/03;

28 “This is equal”: Fox News, 3/3/03;

29 “No person”: Tenet, 250;

30 “disorient”/“break”: LAT, 3/2/03;

31 “crouched”: Der Spiegel, 10/27/03, New Yorker, 8/13/07;

32 Commission Report/211: authors’ analysis based on Robert Windrem, “Cheney’s Role Deepens,” 5/13/09, www.thedailybeast.com;

33 “enhanced”: Special Review, “Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities,” Office of Inspector General, CIA, 5/7/04, www.cia.gov;

34 “dark side”: transcript, int. of Richard Cheney, Meet the Press, NBC, 9/16/01;

35 “certain acts”: “Memorandum for Alberto Gonzales from Asst. A.G. Jay Bybee,” 8/1/02.

36 Red Cross monitors/asked in vain/​“torture”/​leaked/​“suffocation,” etc.: FAQ, www.icrc.org, Mark Danner, “The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means,” NY Review of Books, 4/30/09, “Report on the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value’ Detainees,” International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/07, www.nyrb.com. Measures defined as “torture” or “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of prisoners of war are illegal under the Third Geneva Convention (1949) and the U.N. Convention Against Torture (1984). To circumvent the treaties, and after advice from the Justice Department, President Bush formally determined in early 2002 that the 1949 Geneva Convention did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda, and that the group’s detainees therefore did not qualify as “prisoners of war.”

The Red Cross determined that—in addition to KSM—thirteen other prisoners, suspected of having been in al Qaeda’s “inner circle,” suffered mistreatment constituting torture. The authors here confine themselves to U.S. treatment of prisoners relevant to the 9/11 story, but the mistreatment extended to captives elsewhere—as at Abu Ghraib prison after the invasion of Iraq. As well as pertinent documents referred to below, there has been groundbreaking reporting by Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, and Mark Danner (“inner circle”: Summary of High Value Detainee Program, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 9/06,

www.c-span.org

; torture: Red Cross Report; pertinent documents: e.g. as excerpted in eds. John Ehrenberg et al.,

The Iraq Papers

, NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010, 403–. In addition to the previously cited Red Cross Report, see also “The Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment & Interrogation,” Report, International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/04).

37 “complain”: “Lesson 18,” al Qaeda Manual, www.justice.gov. The “manual” was among items confiscated in May 2000 from the home of a suspected al Qaeda member, Anas al-Liby, following a search by the Manchester (U.K.) police. The document was supplied to the United States, translated, and used by the prosecution in the 2001 embassy bombings trial (transcript, U.S. v. Usama bin Laden et al., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY, S [7] 98-CR-1023, 3/26/01, “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 110th Cong, 2nd Sess., Washington, D.C., U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 11/20/08, Executive Summary, xii).

38 review acknowledged: Special Review, “Counterterrorism,” & see “Memorandum for John Rizzo, CIA from Asst. A.G. Jay Bybee, 8/1/02, & see LAT, 12/22/02, Telegraph (U.K.), 3/9/03;

39 “my eyes”: Red Cross Report.

40 “If anything”: Special Review, “Counterterrorism.” The reference to a threat to kill KSM’s children appears in the CIA’s 2004 “Special Review” of counterterrorism detention and interrogation activities. According to the 2007 statement of another detainee’s father, KSM’s children were at one point “denied food and water,” at another “mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.” A Justice Department memo released in 2009 shows that approval was given to use insects to frighten an adult detainee into talking, while another document reports that the CIA never used the technique. According to a cousin, one of KSM’s sons is mentally disabled and the other epileptic. As of this writing both boys were reportedly with their mother in Iran (threat: Special Review, Office of the Inspector General, CIA, 5/7/04, www.cia.gov; statement: “Verbatim Transcript of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing for ISN 10020,” www.defense.gov—the statement was made by Ali Kahn, father of Majid Kahn; memos: Memorandum for John Rizzo, CIA from Jay Bybee, Asst. A.G., 8/1/02, Memorandum for John Rizzo, CIA from Stephen Bradbury, Principal Asst. Deputy A.G., 5/10/05, www.aclu.org; disabled/epileptic: New Yorker, 9/13/10; with mother: ibid., WP, 11/14/09).

41 Poland/“verge”/“I would”: Red Cross Report;

42 14 seconds/2½ minutes: ABC News, 11/18/05;

43 183 times: Special Review, “Counterterrorism.”

44 long history: “Waterboarding: A Tortured History,” NPR, 11/3/07, NYT, 3/9/08, WP, 11/5/06, Margulies, 73–;

45 “in violation”: ibid., 74;

46 executed Japanese: “History Supports McCain’s Stance on Waterboarding,” 11/29/07, www.politifact.com;

47 “The United States”/“alternative”/“separate program”/“I thought”/“take potential”: “President Bush Discusses Creation of Military Commissions to Try Suspect Terrorists,” 9/6/06, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov, George Bush, Decision Points, London: Virgin, 2010, 169;

48 “a great many”: NY Review of Books, 4/30/09;

49 “would not”: New Yorker, 1/21/08;

50 “provable”: Toronto Star, 11/20/10;

51 agents: NYT, 6/22/08, 4/23/09;

52 “intensely disputed”: NY Review of Books, 4/30/09;

53 Obama banned: ibid.;

54 “The use”: Mark Danner, “US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites,” NY Review of Books, 4/9/09.

55 “Any piece”: NY Review of Books, 4/30/09.

56 spewed information: KSM’s most recent known admissions, to the military tribunal in Guantánamo, included the “A to Z” of 9/11, the 1993 attack on the Trade Center, the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, the failed attack on a plane by shoe bomber Richard Reid, and the murder of U.S. soldiers in Kuwait. He said he planned more than twenty other crimes, including a “Second Wave” of attacks on American landmarks to follow 9/11, attacks on nuclear power plants, on London’s Heathrow Airport, on Gibraltar, on the Panama Canal, on NATO headquarters in Brussels, on four Israeli targets, and on targets in Thailand and South Korea. Whatever the truth about most of this string of claims, there may now be less doubt than previously as to his claim to have killed reporter Pearl. A 2011 study by Georgetown University and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, however, indicated that KSM had—as he claimed—been the killer. A man named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death in connection with Pearl’s murder in 2002 and is currently imprisoned in Karachi awaiting an appeal (“Verbatim Transcript of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing for ISN 10024,” www.defense.gov, AP, 3/18/07, New Yorker, 1/21/08, Irish Times, 1/21/11, JTA, 1/20/11, Times of Oman, 3/28/11, Musharraf, 228).

57 “Detainee has”: New Yorker, 8/13/07;

58 “I gave”: Red Cross Report;

59 “some level”: Times-Dispatch (Richmond, VA), 7/6/08;

60 “We were not”: “Cheney’s Role Deepens,” 5/13/09, www.thedailybeast.com;

61 “Never, ever”: Richard Ben-Veniste, The Emperor’s New Clothes, NY: Thomas Dunne, 2009, 248;

62 Commission not told/turned down/blocked: MFR of int. George Tenet, 12/23/03, Kean & Hamilton, 119–;

63 “incomplete”: Shenon, 391;

64 “We never”: New Republic, 5/23/05;

65 “reliance”: Farmer, 362;

66 “Assessing”: CR, 146. Of 1,744 footnotes in the report, it has been estimated that more than a quarter refer to information extracted from captives during questioning that employed the interrogation techniques authorized after 9/11 (Newsweek, 3/14/09).

67 Fouda scoop: Fouda & Fielding, 23–, 38, 105, 114–, 148–, 156–, & see int. Yosri Fouda for Paladin InVision, 2006, conv. Nick Fielding, corr. Yosri Fouda, 2011. Fouda’s book on the case, written with Nick Fielding of the Sunday Times (London), was published as Masterminds of Terror in 2003;

68 Binalshibh: Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni, was an associate of the three 9/11 hijackers based in Germany until 2000, when they left for the United States. He had himself wished to take part in the operation but, unable to obtain a U.S. visa, functioned as go-between. Like KSM, Binalshibh was by 2002 a fugitive (Staff Report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel,” CO, 5, 11–, 36);

69 footnote: CR, 492n40;

70 evidence: “Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal,” 2/8/07, http://projects.nytimes.com & see int. Udo Jacob—Motassadeq attorney;

71 Suskind: Suskind, One Percent, 102–, 133–, 156;

72 Bergen: Bergen, OBL I Know, 301–.

73 authentic: Others, notably Paul Thompson and Chaim Kupferberg, have raised doubts about Fouda’s account. Both noted that Fouda did not tell the truth about the date of the interview with KSM and Binalshibh, raising the possibility that his overall reporting of the interviews may be inaccurate. It is true that the reported date of the interview changed after the story broke in September 2002. While Fouda initially claimed the interviews were conducted in Karachi in June of that year, he later revealed that the interviews had taken place two months earlier, in the third week of April. Questioned about the discrepancy in late 2002, Fouda said, “I lied because I needed to lie … if something went wrong and I needed to get in touch with them … they [KSM and Binalshibh] would be the only ones who would know that I had met them one month earlier than I had let on, and so I’d know I was talking to the right people” (doubts: Paul Thompson, “Is There More to the Capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Than Meets the Eye?,” 3/03, www.historycommons.org, Chaim Kupferberg, “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: The Official Legend of 9/11 Is a Fabricated Setup,” 3/15/07, www.globalresearch.ca; changed dates: Sunday Times (London), 9/8/02, Guardian (U.K.), 3/4/03, Fouda & Fielding, 23, 29, 148; “I lied”: int. Fouda by Abdallah Schleifer, Fall/Winter 2002, www.tbsjournal.com.

74 “a close”: Fouda & Fielding, 113;

75 chairman: ibid., 117.

CHAPTER 22

1

first meeting:

CR, 488n1;

2

“very calm”:

In the Footsteps of Bin Laden

, CNN, 8/23/06;

3

projects:

MFR 04013804, 12/4/03, Wright, 168–;

4

all manner:

Bergen,

OBL I Know

, 133;

5

rich and poor:

bin Ladens & Sasson, 111, 115;

6

financial support S.A.:

Time

, 9/15/03, Peter Dale Scott,

The Road to 9/11

, Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 2007, 149–;

7

veterans:

Bergen,

Holy War Inc.

, 86, Richard Clarke, 137;

8

OBL to Bosnia/citizenship:

Ottawa Citizen

, 12/15/01,

WSJ

, 11/1/01;

9

Flottau:

John Schindler,

Unholy Terror

, Minneapolis: Zenith, 2007, 123– & see “British Journalist Eye-Witnessed Osama Bin Laden Entering Alija Izetbegovic’s Office,” 2/3/06.

www.slobodan-milosevic.org

,

The Times

(London), 9/28/07;

10 KSM twice: CR, 147, 488n5;

11 funds Chechnya: Benjamin & Simon, 113, Loretta Napoleoni, Terror Incorporated, NY: Seven Stories, 2005, 95;

12 holdouts: Newsweek, 8/19/02.

13 Two hijackers: JI, Report, 131, Testimony of George Tenet, 6/18/02, JI. The future 9/11 hijackers who fought in Bosnia were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested before 9/11, reportedly served as a recruiter for the Chechen mujahideen (Mihdhar/Hazmi: Staff Statement 16, CO; Moussaoui: Legat, Paris to Minneapolis, FBI 199M-MP-60130, 8/22/01, Defense Exhibit 346, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Tenet, 202);

14 Zawahiri in Sudan/directed/Mubarak: Wright, 185–, 213, 215–, bin Ladens & Sasson, 129–;

15 Zubaydah/manager: CR, 59, 169, 175, Thomas Jocelyn, “The Zubaydah Dossier,” 8/17/09, www.weeklystandard.com;

16 “The snake”: Testimony of Jamal al-Fadl, U.S. v. Usama Bin Laden et al., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY, S(7) 98-CR-1023, 2/6/01, CR, 59;

17 Yemen attacks: Staff Statement 15, CO, Atwan, 166. There were no American fatalities in the bombings, but an Australian tourist was killed (Staff Statement 15, CO);

18 Somalia/Black Hawks: transcript int. of OBL by Hamid Mir, 3/18/97, www.fas.org, Staff Statement 15, CO, int. Abdel Bari Atwan, Atwan, 36;

19 Riyadh attack: CR, 60, Staff Statement 15, CO, Wright, 211–, Burke, 154–;

20 “paved”: ed. Lawrence, 36–;

21 “adopt”: int. OBL by Hamid Mir;

22 Dhahran: Staff Statement 15, CO, CR, 60, Bamford, Pretext, 163, Benjamin & Simon, 224, William Simpson, 275;

23 Iran responsible?: CR, 60;

24 traveled Qatar/purchase: Christopher Blanchard, “Qatar: Background & U.S. Relations,” Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., 1/24/08, Stephen Hayes, “Case Closed,” 11/24/03, www.weeklystandard.com, Gareth Porter, “Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing,” 6/24/09, CounterPunch.

25 “heroes”: ed. Lawrence, 52. The debate over responsibility for the Dhahran attack was prolonged and bitter. Vital reading on the subject includes the relevant part of a memoir by the FBI director of the day, Louis Freeh, and—for a very different view—a series of 2009 articles by reporter Gareth Porter (Louis Freeh, My FBI, NY: St. Martin’s, 2005, 1–, Gareth Porter, CounterPunch, 6/24/09);

26 interview: int. Abdel bari Atwan, Atwan, 36;

27 “They called”: France-Soir, 8/27/98, citing int. of 1995 & see bin Ladens & Sasson, 127;

28 royals persuaded/“They beseeched”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 104, Corbin, 57, MFR 04013955, 12/3/03, AP, 6/15/08, Bergen, OBL I Know, 150;

29 “behavior”: “State Dept. Issues Fact Sheet on Bin Laden,” 8/14/96 cited at Brisard & Dasquié, 169;

30 share sold off: Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Financing, CO, Lacey, Inside the Kingdom, 177–, AP, 6/15/08.

31 formal cutoff/future: Bergen, Holy War Inc., 102, CR, 62, bin Ladens & Sasson, 128. Men who worked for bin Laden in Sudan have recalled him saying that money was short. One man, Jamal al-Fadl, defected following a clash over funding and became a useful informant for the United States. Bin Laden’s son Omar remembered a time in the Sudan when funds were limited after his father “lost access to his huge bank accounts in the Kingdom” (money short/Fadl: Testimony of L’Hossaine Kerchtou, 2/22/01, & Jamal al-Fadl, 2/7/01, U.S. v. Usama bin Laden et al., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY, S[7]98-CR-1023, CR, 62; “lost”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 12).

32 “Blood is”: int. of Rahimullah Yusufzai for Paladin InVision, 2006, Bergen, OBL I Know, 203 but see FBI 302s of int. bin Laden family members, “Saudi Flights,” B70, T5, CF;

33 “OBL has kept”: Note de Synthèse, 7/24/00 in “Oussama Bin Laden,” leaked DGSE report, 9/13/01, seen by authors;

34 Yeslam: Scheuer, Osama bin Laden, 28;

35 “Some female”: Statement of Vincent Cannistraro, Hearings, Committee on International Realations, U.S. House of Reps, 107th Cong., 1st Sess., 10/3/01.

36 funding cut off: Whether or not bin Laden was really “disowned” by his family, there were over the years many suggestions that he had a personal fortune of some $300 million—from which he funded operations. According to the 9/11 Commission, this is merely “urban legend.” A commission analysis suggests he received approximately $1 million a year from the family coffers between 1970 and 1993—the year in which his share of the family business was sold and OBL’s portion “frozen.” The author Peter Bergen, writing in 2001, cited a source close to the family as saying bin Laden’s inheritance from his father was $35 million. In his 2008 biography of the bin Laden clan, Steve Coll stated that the value placed on OBL’s share of the family business at the time he was reportedly stripped of it was a surprisingly low $9.9 million. Even taken together, these sums total far less than the rumored $300 million figure.

The approximately $30 million consumed annually by al Qaeda operations prior to 9/11 apparently came from a core of “financial facilitators” and “fundraisers” in the Gulf—particularly in Saudi Arabia. The 9/11 operation itself cost only $400,000–$500,000. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told his interrogators that bin Laden provided 85–90 percent of that. Investigators believe, however, that this money came not from personal funds, but rather from monies he controlled (official estimates: MFR 03010990, 11/4/03, CF, FBI memo, “Ali Ahmad Mesdaq, International Terrorism, Usama bin Laden,” 1/28/02, INTELWIRE,

WP

, 8/28/98; popular reports: e.g.

WP

, 8/28/98, “Tracing bin Laden’s Money,” 9/21/01,

www.ict.org

; “myth”/$1 million: Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” CO; $35 million: Bergen,

Holy War Inc.

, 101–; $9.9 million: Coll,

Bin Ladens

, 405–, 485–; $30 million/​“fundraisers”/​KSM: Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” CO).

37 $4.5 million: Note de Synthèse;

38 “$3,000,000”/“wealthy Saudis”/“siphoning”: Statement of Vincent Cannistraro, Boston Herald, 10/14/01;

39 considerable: Chouet int. for Le Monde, 3/29/07, http://alain.chouet.free.fr, Politique Étrangère, March/April 03, int. Alain Chouet;

40 $30 million/​donations/​“wealthy”: Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” CO;

41 “subterfuge”/manipulate: Chouet int. for Le Monde, 3/29/07, http://alain.chouet.free.fr, int. Alain Chouet.

42 “sponsorship”/OBL funding: MFR 04013804, 12/4/03, MFR 04013803, 12/30/03, WP, 10/3/01;

43 “We couldn’t”/“We asked”/“hot potato”: USA Today, 11/12/01, Bill Clinton, My Life, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, 797–;

44 “My calculation”: WP, 10/3/01;

45 “probably the biggest”: Sunday Times (London), 1/5/02;

46 “perhaps”/“probably the best”: Frontline: “Hunting bin Laden,” www.pbs.org, New Yorker, 1/24/00.

47 “whisked”/refueled: bin Ladens & Sasson, 139–, 142, 309. Other accounts have suggested that the plane was allowed to refuel in Qatar. The authors have deferred to what Omar bin Laden—who was there—said. According to him, the plane stopped to refuel at Shiraz, in Iran (Coll, Ghost Wars, 325);

48 “Our plane”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 180–, Asia Times, 11/28/01;

49 Jalalabad: bin Ladens & Sasson, 149–, CR, 65;

50 desolate/“new home”/“I was put”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 150–, 156, 161, 174—, 176–;

51 cabin: Atwan, 28, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 93;

52 Kalashnikov: bin Ladens & Sasson, 165;

53 tapes/fax: int. Dr. Flagg Miller, Univ. of Calif.;

54 satellite phone: Bamford, Shadow Factory, 8, Gunaratna, 141;

55 dictating: bin Ladens & Sasson, 165;

56 fax transmission: int. Abdel Bari Atwan, Atwan, 53;

57 “summit”/hundreds of thousands: Flagg Miller, “On ‘The Summit of the Hindu Kush’: Osama bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War Reconsidered,” unpub. ms. courtesy of Miller.

58 “Declaration”: full text, “Ladenese Epistle: Declaration of War,” Pts. I, II, III, www.washingtonpost.com [web only], 9/21/01. Though often described as a fatwa, the declaration seems not to fit the usual meaning of that word—“a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority” (worldnetweb.princeton.edu/​perl/​webwn);

59 KSM-Atef meeting: CR, 148.

60 traveled together: The authors suggest that the travel together may have been to Bosnia, because—as noted earlier in this chapter—bin Laden and KSM are both known to have made visits there during that period (JI, Report, 313).

61 KSM proposal/​“theater”/​“Why do you”: KSM SUBST, CR, 148–, 153–, 489n11–14, Tenet, 251. The source of this second version of the proposal, citing bin Laden’s supposed retort, was reportedly Abu Zubaydah—another senior aide to bin Laden (CR 491n35, JI, Report, 130);

62 “would not focus”: KSM SUBST;

63 OBL priority: Tenet, 248.

64 “not convinced”: KSM SUBST. Bin Laden did, however, invite KSM to join al Qaeda, he told the CIA. He demurred, he said, because he wanted to retain the ability to approach other terrorist groups (CR 154).

65 video of Twin Towers, etc.: “The Fifth Estate: War Without Borders,” www.cbc.ca, AP, 7/17/02, CR, 530n145, AP, 7/17/02. The filming in the United States was done in 1997 by a Syrian living in Spain named Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, who was arrested after 9/11. According to the Spanish Interior Ministry, “the style and duration of the recordings far exceed tourist curiosity.” Spanish investigators believed that an al Qaeda courier delivered copies of the tapes to Afghanistan (AP, 7/17/02, CR, 530n145, “The Fifth Estate: War Without Borders,” www.cbc.ca).

66 “to study”: KSM SUBST.

67 “individuals”: Statement of Eleanor Hill, 2/17/02, JI. The 9/11 Commission noted that there had been significant radical Islamic activity in Arizona prior to 9/11. The Islamic Center of Tucson was a branch of the Office of Services, long since established by bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam in Pakistan. It had begun distributing its journal throughout the United States as early as 1986. Two former FBI informants claimed after 9/11 that they had alerted the FBI to the presence of suspicious Arabs at Arizona flight schools in 1996 (Commission: CR, 226–, 520–; Center: Steven Emerson, American Jihad, NY: Free Press, 2002, 129–, Frontline: “The Man Who Knew,” www.pbs.org, NYT, 6/7/02; claim: WP, 9/23/01, 5/24/02, NYT, 5/24/02, FBI IG, Aukai Collins, My Jihad, Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2002, 213–).

68 “different person”/beard, etc.: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” FBI, 2/1/07, INTELWIRE, Report, JI, 135, Testimony of George Tenet, 6/18/02, JI, Graham with Nussbaum, 40–;

69 Atta/27: Staff Statement 16, WSJ, 10/16/01, McDermott, 2–, 31 but see re Mecca twice 57;

70 “colony”/“Resistance”: Fisk, The Great War, 21–.

Part V: PERPETRATORS

CHAPTER 23

1

Wiley:

MFR 04017164, 11/25/03;

2

“independent”:

JI, Report, Appendix, 5;

3

“flake”:

Benjamin & Simon, 243;

4

“terrorist financier”:

Richard Clarke, 96, Tenet, xi;

5

“Ford Foundation”:

Benjamin & Simon, 242;

6

not named:

Executive Order 12947, 1/23/95,

Federal Register

, Vol. 60, No. 16, Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” CO;

7

9 speeches:

Richard Clarke, 129–, e.g., “American Security in a Changing World,” speech, 8/5/96, U.S. Department of State, Dispatch, Vol. 7, No. 32, & see “Presidential Speech Archive,”

www.millercenter.org

;

8

PDD-39/​rendition/​coordinated:

“Memorandum for the Vice President et al. from William J. Clinton,” 6/21/95 [PDD-39],

www.fas.org

, Benjamin & Simon, 230, CR, 101;

9

badgered:

Richard Clarke, 135;

10 “foaming”: Benjamin & Simon, 243;

11 “It just seemed”: Clarke, 135;

12 “asleep”: Hollingsworth with Mitchell, 101;

13 approval of Lake: Bamford, Pretext, 205, int. Michael Scheuer for Paladin InVision;

14 dozen/40: CR, 479n2;

15 FBI liaison/“buzz saw”: Statement of George Tenet, 10/17/02, JI, FBI IG;

16 focus/women/shopping complex/​committed/​zealot: Shenon, 188–, MFR 04020389, 6/21/04, CR, 109;

17 CTC-TFL: Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” CO;

18 more operational: MFR 04017164, 11/25/03;

19 changed name: Tenet, 100;

20 “My God”/“truly dangerous”: Shenon, 189;

21 “civilians and military”: int. of OBL for ABC News, transcript available at Frontline: “Hunting bin Laden,” www.pbs.org;

22 “They chose”: int. of OBL for CNN, 3/97, www.cnn.com;

23 “If they”: Bergen, OBL I Know, 242;

24 “snatch”: Richard Clarke, 149;

25 surveillance/human intelligence: Farmer, 29;

26 eavesdropping/phone: Bamford, Pretext, 162–, Gunaratna, 12, WP, 4/24/01;

27 training camp: CR, 111;

28 CIA plan/​“half-assed”/​“perfect”: Tenet, 112–, Wright, 265–, Michael Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, New York: Free Press, 2008, 272n3, CR, 111–, Richard Clarke, 149;

29 memo: Scheuer, Marching, 271;

30 “They could not”: Shenon, 190;

31 Nairobi bomb/casualties: Report of Accountability Review Boards, Bombings of the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998, U.S. Dept. of State, www.fas.org, Wright, 270, Corbin, 73;

32 Dar es Salaam: Report of Accountability Review Boards, The Independent (U.K.), 8/8/98;

33 worst: Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, 183, Robert Johnston, “Worst Terrorist Attacks—Woldwide,” www.johnstonarchive.net;

34 bomber/met OBL/for OBL: Testimony of Stephen Gaudin, U.S. v. Usama Bin Laden et al., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY, S(7) 98-CR-1023, 1/8/01, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 107, Corbin, 71, Criminal Complaint Against Mohamed Rashed Al-’Owhali, U.S. Federal Court for the Southern District of NY, 8/26/98, http://avalon.law.yale.edu, Reeve, 198–;

35 bomber/OBL calls: Gaudin testimony, JI, Report, 129–, Wright, 276–.

36 “I did”/Odeh/“my leader”: Bergen, Holy War Inc., 53, 113, Reeve, 201. The four men convicted for their roles in the Kenya and Tanzania bombings were Mohamed al-’Owhali, Mohamed Odeh—the two terrorists referred to in the text—Khalfan Mohamed, and bin Laden’s former secretary Wadih al-Hage. They were convicted in May 2001. A fifth man, Ahmed Ghailani, who had been charged on a total of 285 counts, was in 2010 acquitted of multiple murder and attempted murder charges. Though found guilty only of conspiracy to damage U.S. property, he was handed a life sentence (4 men: AP, 11/24/08; Ghailani: BBC, 1/25/2011).

37 “excited and happy”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 237;

38 “juice”: int. of Abdulrahman Khadr, Frontline: “Son of al Qaeda,” www.pbs.org, “Al Qaeda Family: The Black Sheep,” 3/3/04, www.cbc.ca;

39 “Only God”/“real men”/“Our job”: int. of OBL for ABC News, 12/23/98 available at http://pws.prserv.net, Time, 1/11/99;

40 “the greatest”: int. of OBL for Al Jazeera, 12/98, http://wasarch.ucr.edu;

41 “respond”: MFR 04021459, 1/29/04;

42 opportunity/attack: Tenet, 115–, Miller & Stone, 210–, Clinton, 803–, Burke, 52;

43 Security tight: MFR 04021469, 12/19/03, Richard Clarke, 187;

44 told Pakistan/Ralston: Clinton, 799, Richard Clarke, 186–;

45 “Our target”: text of President Clinton’s address, CBS News, 8/20/98.

46 circumlocution: CR, 113–, 126–, 484n101, Executive Order 12333, United States Intelligence Activities, 12/4/81. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who had succeeded Lake, would tell the 9/11 Commission that the intention of the missile strikes had been “to be bouncing bin Laden into the rubble.” Under Secretary for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering told commission staff the primary objective had been “to kill bin Laden and other senior leaders he was meeting with” (Berger: testimony of Sandy Berger, 3/34/04, CO; Pickering: MFR 04013744, 12/22/03, CF).

47 “intently focused”: Clinton, 798.

48 some fatalities: CR, 117, bin Ladens & Sasson, 240–, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 121–, int. of OBL for ABC News, 12/23/98. National Security Adviser Berger told the 9/11 Commission that “20–30 people in the camps” were killed. Interviewed in late 1998, bin Laden acknowledged that seven “brothers” were killed and “20-something Afghans.” In addition, according to Bruce Lawrence, editor of bin Laden’s public statements, seven Pakistanis also died (CR, 117, 482n46, int. of OBL by Rahimullah Yusufzai, 12/23/98, ABC News online, www.cryptome.org, ed. Lawrence, 83fn);

49 factory destroyed/intelligence shaky: Reeve, 202, Tenet, 117, CR, 118, Stephen Hayes, “The Connection,” 6/7/04, www.weeklystandard.com;

50 $750,000: Bamford, Pretext, 209;

51 $10,000: CR, 498n127;

52 propaganda victory/T-shirts: Hamel, 216, WP, 10/3/01;

53 “a highly”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 238.

54 “He had been”: MFR 03013620, 12/12/03, CR, 117. Bin Laden himself appeared to confirm as much a month later when he told Al Jazeera: “I was hundreds of kilometers away from there. As for the information that was supposed to have reached us, we found a sympathetic and generous people in Pakistan who exceeded all our expectations, and we received information from our beloved ones and helpers of jihad for the sake of God against the Americans.” Omar bin Laden’s recent account seems more worthy of credence than the story told by one of his father’s former bodyguards, Abu Jandal. According to Jandal, only a whimsical change of mind led bin Laden to change his plans and head for Kabul instead of the targeted camp (“I was hundreds”: ed. Lawrence, 7; whimsical: Nasser al-Bahri with Georges Malbrunot, Dans l’ombre de Ben Laden, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France: Michel Lafon, 2010, 149–, transcript, CNN Presents: In the Footsteps of bin Laden, 8/23/06).

55 “In 1996”: JI, Report, 217;

56 “conspiracy”: ibid., 129, Statement of Mary Jo White, 10/2/02, JI, Report;

57 200-page/$5 million: Indictment, U.S. v. Usama bin Laden et al., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY, 98 CR, 11/4/1998, WP, 11/5/98;

58 $25 million/double: Kenneth Katzman, “Terrorism: Near Eastern Groups and State Sponsors, 2002,” Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., 2/13/02, BBC News, 7/13/07 “Tier 0”: JI, Report, 40;

59 “We are”: CR, 357, JI, Report, 124.

60 “lethal force”: CR, 131–, 485n123, Shenon, 357. Clinton, Berger, and others told the 9/11 Commission that the president’s intent was clear—he wanted bin Laden dead. According to Tenet, however: “Almost all the ‘authorities’ [presidential authorizations] provided to us with regard to bin Laden were predicated on the planning of a capture operation.” Other senior officials agreed with this interpretation. Attorney General Janet Reno, Tenet wrote later, “made it clear … that she would view an attempt simply to kill bin Laden as illegal” (intent: CR, 133; Tenet: Tenet, 111–, “Director’s Statement on the Release of the 9/11 IG Report Executive Summary,” 8/21/07, www.cia.gov; Reno: CR, 132–).

61 operations against: Executive Summary, “Report on CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks,” 6/05, CR, 132–, 142;

62 “Policy makers”: Tenet, 123.

63 “two chances”: Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, 61. The Scheuer reference relates to the period between May 1998 and May 1999. A 9/11 Commission staff report noted only three occasions in that time frame on which strikes were considered. In December 1998, when there was intelligence indicating that bin Laden was at a location near Kandahar, an operation was called off—according to Tenet—because of doubt as to whether the information was good and the risk of killing people in a nearby mosque. In February 1999, bin Laden was firmly believed to be at a location in the desert in Helmand province. U.S. officials vacillated, however, because members of the government of the United Arab Emirates were hunting nearby. The opportunity passed. Another strike was considered in May 1999, but scrubbed because some doubted the reliability of the source. In July that year, President Clinton authorized the CIA to work with Pakistani and Uzbek operatives to capture bin Laden. It is not clear what stage that project reached (Staff Statement 6, CO, CR, 130–, 485n116–488n194, & see Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, 284n8, 285n15).

64 “Tenet consistently”: WP, 4/29/07.

65 “cared little”/“moral cowardice”: Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, 48, 75, 82, 84, 85, 290. Scheuer was closely informed on everything to do with the pursuit of bin Laden until some point in 1999. Sometime after the aborted strike in February 1999 (see previous note), however, he was removed as head of Alec Station—after a clash with an FBI manager assigned to the unit. Much of Scheuer’s 2008 book comes over as a furious venting of his feelings (Wright, 291–, Shenon, 188, Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, refs.).

66 “pathetically”: Clarke, 204;

67 “authorized”: int. of Bill Clinton by Fox News, 9/24/06;

68 “kill authority”: Shenon, 357–;

69 “attacks”: CR, 120;

70 “My father”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 239;

71 went to ground: ibid.;

72 stopped using phone: Mail on Sunday (U.K.), 12/23/01, Kessler, 84–, Corbin, 88, JI, Report, 69;

73 “wished to send”: Atwan, 55–.

74 “But things”: Gaudin testimony. The bomber arrested after running away was Mohamed al-’Owhali (see above). The accomplice he named was Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (aka Saleh), who is still at large. FBI agent Stephen Gaudin, who questioned him in Nairobi, cited the passage quoted in federal court (Testimony of Stephen Gaudin, U.S. v. Usama Bin Laden et al., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY, S[7] 98-CR-1023, 1/8/01).

75 summoned/“could work”: KSM SUBST. KSM provided “inconsistent information” as to whether bin Laden approved the operation in late 1998 or in early 1999, according to CIA accounts of his various interrogation sessions (CR, 492n38);

76 Kenya/alias: JI, Report, 313.

77 decoy: Financial Times, 2/14/03. Another report, however, has it that—as of that same month—KSM was working as an “escort” for his longtime mentor Sheikh Abdul Sayyaf, leader of Ittehad-e-Islami, the Islamic Union Party (NY to Bangkok et al., FBI265A-NY-253802, 7/8/09, INTELWIRE, CR, 146–);

78 persuaded: CR, 149, 490n16.

79 “full support”/Atef: KSM SUBST, CR, 154. Al Qaeda suspects questioned in Jordan were to allege that Atef seized on the concept following the 1999 EgyptAir crash off the coast of Massachusetts, which was never satisfactorily explained. The NTSB found that the crash probably occurred “as a result of the relief first officer’s flight control inputs. The reason for the relief first officer’s actions was not determined.” The first officer’s exclamation was initially interpreted as “I place my fate in the hands of God,” and later revised to “I rely on God.” EgyptAir and Egypt’s Civil Aviation Authority advised that the statement was “very often used by the Egyptian layman in day to day activities to ask God’s assistance for the task at hand.” The officer uttered the exclamation nine times while alone, twice more after the captain returned to the cockpit. Two hundred and seventeen people died in the crash (Aircraft Accident Brief, EgyptAir 990, NTSB, 3/13/02, www.ntsb.gov).

80 influenced: WP, 9/11/02.

81 targeting/operatives: KSM SUBST, CR, 154. The plan was adjusted according to the number of suitable operatives available. It would turn out early on that only two of four men originally selected to be pilot hijackers were able to obtain U.S. visas. The two who had no visas, it was then hoped, would explode planes in midair over Asia at the same time their accomplices were hitting targets in the United States. Thinking it too difficult to synchronize the operation, bin Laden would later cancel the Asia part of the operation (KSM SUBST);

82 “military committee”: Fouda & Fielding, 158;

83 two years: KSM SUBST;

84 “planes operation”: CR, 154;

85 Omar disillusioned: bin Ladens & Sasson, 201, 212–, 218–, 248–;

86 “I have heard”: ibid., 254;

87 “gigantic”: ibid., 277.

88 Noonan/“History”: Forbes, 11/30/98.

CHAPTER 24

1

“The mighty”/curbed:

bin Ladens & Sasson, 244, Bergen,

OBL I Know

, 321, 455n20;

2

candidates/two parts/too complicated:

KSM SUBST;

3

Yemenis’ visas/in vain:

Staff Report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel,” CO, 13–. The Yemenis were Walid bin Attash—also known as Khallad—who had lost a leg on the Afghan battlefield, and Abu Bara al-Tai’zi, on whom there appears to be scant information. Bin Laden had known Attash in Saudi Arabia. He was to play a role at later points in the story (KSM SUBST, CR 155–)

two Saudis/aged 24/23:

National Drug Intelligence Center for the FBI, “265D-NY-280350, TWINBOM-PENTTBOM, Biographical Report,” 11/26/01, authors’ collection, Blair Oakley to Janice Kephart, 3/23/04, “Hijacker Primary Documents—AA77,” B50, T5, CF;

4

friends:

Testimony of George Tenet, 6/18/02, JI, Bamford,

Shadow Factory

, 9;

5

well-to-do/married Yemeni/veterans:

ibid., 9, Staff Statement 16, CO, Report, JI, 131, Wright, 309–. Mihdhar’s relations by marriage were the Hada family in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a—their connection to terrorism will be reported later. The future 9/11 conspirator to whom Mihdhar was linked by marriage was Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the Germany-based accomplices (marriage: Bamford,

Shadow Factory

, 7–, McDermott, 183 & see AP, 12/23/07; Binalshibh:

WP

, 9/11/02);

6

“Jihad Ali”/Inspired:

KSM SUBST, Testimony of Stephen Gaudin,

U.S. v. Usama Bin Laden et al.;

Saudi visas easy:

Staff Report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel,” CO, 14–, 116–;

7

had sworn:

JI, Report, 131–, Testimony of George Tenet, JI, 6/18/02;

8

“I swear”

/“hijrah”:

KSM SUBST. In its literal sense, the word

hijrah

or

hegira

refers to the Prophet’s move from Mecca to what is now Medina in

A.D

.

622—the first year of the Muslim era. It has thus come to be synonymous with migration. In the context used here it appears to denote a spiritual “migration” or transformation of the self (corr. Hans Kippenberg, 2010);

9

“the joys”/“My father”:

bin Ladens & Sasson, 262–;

10 candidates in Gulf: KSM SUBST;

11 Italy: McDermott, 209, 299n65. The source cited on the reported KSM visit to Italy is a senior Italian investigator;

12 Germany: Leading U.S. news sources have cited “intelligence reports” indicating that KSM visited Hamburg in 1999. “We have indications from various sources,” Walter Wellinghausen, a senior official of the Hamburg Interior Ministry, told The New York Times, “that [KSM] was in Hamburg for a period, but we have not been able to definitively verify this” (Newsweek, 9/9/02, NYT, 11/4/02, WP, 9/11/02).

13 Atta: Texas Service Center, 911 Terrorist Review, “Hijacker Primary Documents—AA11,” B51, T5, CF, McDermott, 10;

14 friends: int. Mounir Motassadeq;

15 1992/​architecture/​Cairo: McDermott, 18–;

16 father divorced: Timeline Pertaining to Hijackers in Florida, “Timelines 9/11, 2 of 2,” B20, T7, CF;

17 “never stopped”: NYT, 10/10/01;

18 mother’s lap: Sunday Times (London), 1/6/02;

19 “child feelings”: Frontline: “Inside the Terror Network,” 1/17/02, www.pbs.org;

20 insect/“brainless”: Time, 9/30/01;

21 cardiologist/professor: McDermott, 14;

22 did all right/arranged meeting: ibid., 19.

23 flew to Germany: Atta had done a course in German at Cairo’s Goethe Institute. In Germany, he was at some stage sponsored by the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft, which assists young professionals from many foreign countries (Goethe: Uwe Michaels statement to Bundeskriminalamt, Hamburg, 10/2/01, authors’ collection; Duisberg: Tagespiel [Germany], 10/16/01).

24 “exceedingly”: Uwe Michaels Statement to Bundeskriminalamt, Hamburg, 10/2/01, authors’ collection;

25 own meals/​pots/​video/​risqué: Chicago Tribune, 3/7/03;

26 blouse: Sunday Times (London), 1/26/02, LAT, 1/27/02;

27 “that person”: int. of Michaels Jr. by Hannah Cleaver;

28 “words”: Chicago Tribune, 1/27/02;

29 clashes: McDermott, 25–;

30 “a dear human”: Newsweek, 10/1/01 applied self/trips: transcript, int. Dittmar Machule, 10/18/01, Four Corners: A Mission to Die For, 10/18/01, www.abc.net.au;

31 Omar arrive/phony/returned: MFR 04016498, 1/13/04, LAT, 9/1/02, CR, 161;

32 aspired: CR, 161, Fouda & Fielding, 74;

33 “in love”: McDermott, 48;

34 “very funny”: int. Mounir Motassadeq;

35 “disgusting”/read Qur’an: eds. Der Spiegel, 197;

36 newcomer/father muezzin: McDermott, 55;

37 prayer tape: Corbin, 134;

38 “regular guy”: CR, 162;

39 “happy”: int. Mounir Motassadeq;

40 jokes: Miller & Stone, 263;

41 “dreamy”: McDermott, 54;

42 military: CR, 162;

43 marine engineering: McDermott, 53–;

44 $4,000: Corbin, 136;

45 “explode”: Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), 9/23/01;

46 never spoke: McDermott, 54;

47 recite/imagined: ibid., 54, 87;

48 “What is”: ibid., 48;

49 Jarrah flew in/grew up: Corbin, 137, LAT, 10/23/01, CR, 163, “The Fifth Estate: The Story of Ziad Jarrah,” www.cbc.ca, 10/10/01;

50 civil servant/teacher: Fisk, The Great War, 1052, Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection;

51 great-uncle: Der Spiegel, 9/17/08, conv. Gunther Latsch, Fouda & Fielding, 85;

52 cousin: NYT, 2/19/09;

53 Sunni/Christian schools/skipped prayers: Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection, Fisk, The Great War, 1051–;

54 alcohol/“Once”: Corbin, 137, eds. Der Spiegel, 190;

55 nightclubs: The Independent (U.K.), 9/16/01, LAT, 10/23/01;

56 girls: eds. Der Spiegel, 246;

57 Sengün: Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection, Corbin, 137, McDermott, 51, 80;

58 got religion: McDermott, 51; CR, 163, Newsday, 8/15/07;

59 imam/“terrorist”: Tenet identified the imam as Abdulrahman al-Makhadi (Testimony of George Tenet, JI, 6/18/02, & see National Drug Intelligence Center for the FBI, “265D-NY-280350, TWINBOM-PENTTBOM, Biographical Report,” 11/26/01, authors’ collection);

60 “criticized”: Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection;

61 dentistry/switched: CR, 163;

62 “Someone explained”/pregnant: LAT, 1/27/03;

63 Shehhi moved/emulating: CR, 162–;

64 Atta/“leader”: transcript, int. Dittmar Machule;

65 talked angrily: MSNBC Investigates: The Making of the Death Pilots, MSNBC, 4/7/02 & see Chicago Tribune, 9/11/04.

66 “always”/“the war”: Four Corners: A Mission to Die For, 10/18/01, www.abc.net.au. The student was Ralph Bodenstein. One account of Bodenstein’s recollections states that Atta was angered by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians but that—as an Egyptian—he was “most vehement about matters in his own country.” He often raised the Palestine issue at religious classes he gave to younger Muslims. In his youth, Atta may have been influenced on the Palestine issue by his father. Australian reporter Liz Jackson has recalled that after 9/11, when she approached Atta Sr. for an interview, he “said he’d only talk if we paid US $25,000 to the Palestinian intifada. Without that, if we continued filming, he’d break the camera” (one account: Miller & Stone, 251; raised: Chicago Tribune, 9/11/04, McDermott, 36; Atta Sr.: Four Corners: A Mission to Die For, 10/18/01, www.abc.net.au).

67 Brotherhood abjures violence: see “History of the Muslim Brotherhood,” www.ikhanweb.com;

68 exceptions: Benjamin & Simon, 86;

69 recruiting grounds/engineering club: WP, 9/22/01;

70 men from Allepo: transcript, int. Dittmar Machule, McDermott, 29.

71 Zammar/Darkazanli: CR, 164, 167, McDermott, 72–. Zammar has languished in a jail in Syria since his arrest the month after 9/11. A Syrian court convicted him of membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Syria. Because he was allegedly tortured in prison, Amnesty International has issued an appeal on his behalf. Darkazanli has not been accused of any crime in Germany. Spanish prosecutors sought his extradition, however, in 2004, citing alleged contacts with al Qaeda operatives there. Darkazanli was in Spain in summer 2001 at approximately the same time as Atta and Binalshibh (Zammar: “Unfair Trial & Sentencing of Muhammad Haydar Zammar,” Appeal Case, 3rd Update, 3/22/07, www.amnestyusa.org, Der Spiegel, 11/21/05; Darkazanli: “Germany’s Imam Mamoun Darkazanli,” www.jamestown.org, 8/27/10, JI, Report, 183–).

72 “coincidence”: Chicago Tribune, 11/16/02, Derek Flood, “Germany’s Imam Mamoun Darkazanli,” Vol. 1, No. 8, www.jamestown.org.

73 boxes/books/“I will pay”: WP, 9/11/02;

74 Atta vanished/“Don’t ask”: CR, 168, Fouda & Fielding, 123, transcript, int. Dittmar Machule, LAT, 9/1/02, but see Corbin, 139—which suggests he disappeared for more than a year. Tenet so speculated, even though KSM apparently denied to interrogators that Atta went to Afghanistan prior to late 1999 (Testimony of George Tenet, JI, 6/18/02, KSM SUBST).

75 passport lost/new one: Testimony of George Tenet, JI, 6/18/02, McDermott, 57;

76 speculation: ibid., Testimony of George Tenet, MFR 04019351, 12/10/03;

77 “serve the interests”: ed. Lawrence, 60–;

78 “This was sensitive”: Kean & Hamilton, 284–;

79 bring attack forward: KSM SUBST;

80 KSM concern: McDermott, 117–;

81 “the atrocities”: KSM SUBST;

82 KSM claims: “Verbatim Transcription of Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing for ISN 10024,” 3/10/07, www.defense.gov;

83 “entitled”: int. Yousef by Raghida Dergham, Al Hayat, 4/12/95;

84 “If you ask”: McDermott, 13;

85 “world Jewish conspiracy”: CR, 161;

86 “great-grandparents”: LAT, 10/17/04;

87 “How can you”: CR, 162;

88 “He enlightened”: McDermott, 80;

89 “With God’s”: ed. Lawrence, 61;

90 “The problem”: McDermott, 82;

91 met/prayed, etc.: ibid., 58–;

92 apartment: “Hamburger Mietvertrag für Wohnraum,” Marienstrasse 54, 10/31/98, authors’ collection;

93 Dar al-Ansar: McDermott, 63, CR, 164, 495n82. See Notes for Ch. 18, p. 501;

94 “the highest”: McDermott, 62;

95 “dissatisfied”: ibid., 51–, 275n15;

96 dying for faith: ibid., 49;

97 “love death”: “Ladenese Epistle: Declaration of War,” pts. I, II, III, www.washingtonpost.com.

98 “The morning”/“the smell”: McDermott, 88, 280n43. Jarrah’s notes, found with his Hamburg college papers, are in German police files. The 1996 bin Laden declaration—reported in Ch. 22, p. 253—not only includes the “death as you love life” reference but also multiple references to Paradise. Bin Laden was to use almost exactly the same phrase in a letter in Arabic posted on the Internet in October 2002 (notes: McDermott, 89, 280n43; OBL letter: ed. Lawrence, 172);

99 “Paradise”: McDermott, 85;

100 “Muslims are”: WP, 9/11/02, CR, 496n88. Washington Post reporter Peter Finn dated the Atta-Nickels exchange as having occurred in November 1999. The commission dates it merely to the year 1999 (WP, 9/11/02, CR, 496n88).

101 traveled Afghanistan: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted], FBI, 2/1/07, INTELWIRE, Report, JI, 134–, MFR 04019351, 12/10/03. Binalshibh, the sole survivor of the group from Germany, would tell interrogators that they had initially planned to fight in Chechnya. The decision to go instead to Afghanistan, he claimed, was the outcome of an encounter with a man he and two others of the Hamburg group met by chance on a train. This claim may or may not be true. According to Binalshibh, the man on the train—whom he identified as Khalid al-Masri—advised them to talk with a second man named Mohamed Slahi. Slahi, when they went to see him, allegedly said it was difficult to get to Chechnya and suggested they travel instead to Afghanistan via Pakistan. Khalid al-Masri, if he ever existed, has yet to be identified. (He is not the man of the same name who after 9/11was seized in Macedonia by a U.S. “snatch team,” reportedly tortured, and—when CIA officials concluded he had been wrongfully detained—released by being dumped at the roadside in Albania. Slahi was arrested soon after 9/11 and eventually transferred to Guantánamo. A Senate inquiry found that he was subjected to serious ill treatment. Though Slahi admitted having met Binalshibh and his two comrades, he denied having suggested they go to Afghanistan. At the time of writing he remains in Guantánamo but has not been charged. A federal judge ruled in March 2010 that a prosecution of Slahi was impossible because his file was “so tainted by coercion and mistreatment.” In November 2010, a U.S. appeals court ordered the judge to review the case. Mohammed Zammar, meanwhile—who had also reportedly been tortured, not in U.S. custody but in a Syrian jail—told visiting German investigators that he “helped” Binalshibh and the others get to Afghanistan (encounter/​Masri/​advised: CR, 165, 496n90, German translation of interrogation of Binalshibh provided to prosecution in Motassadeq case, Vereinigte Staaten Von Amerika gegen Zacarias Moussaoui, 4/28/05, authors’ collection; snatched/dumped Albania: WP, 12/4/05, The Independent [U.K.], 5/1907; Slahi: Report, “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, 110th Cong. 2nd Sess., 11/20/08, http://armed-services.senate.gov, 138–, Miami Herald, 11/5/10, WP, 3/24/10; Zammar: Der Spiegel, 11/21/05).

102 bodyguard recalled: The bodyguard was Nasser al-Bahri. Fahd al-Quso, a Yemeni interrogated after 9/11, said he, too, had seen Shehhi in Kandahar, when he became sick (Bahri: Newsweek, 9/3/07, Wright, 366 & see Sunday Times [London], 10/1/06; Quso: New Yorker. 7/10 & 17/06);

103 Another jihadi: Bergen, OBL I Know, 262;

104 handwritten note: FBI translation, 12/21/01, “Misc. Requests for Documents, FBI-03013592, Packet 2,” CF.

105 videotape/“will”: The footage was described in a story by Yosri Fouda in the London Sunday Times on October 1, 2006. The same day, NBC News showed still photos from the videotape. According to the Times article, the videotape was “obtained through a previously tested channel.” The article also said that sources from both al Qaeda and the United States had confirmed the authenticity of the tape, “on condition of anonymity.” Date marks on the footage show that bin Laden was filmed on January 8 and the future hijackers on January 18, 2000. Atta, Jarrah, and Binalshibh apparently were in Afghanistan on both those days. The different date marks seem to indicate that bin Laden was not present when Atta and Jarrah recorded their martyrdom statements. NBC’s story reported, however, that “U.S. government analysis … identifies hijackers Atta and Jarrah in the large crowd at bin Laden’s feet” (Sunday Times [London] & NBC News, 10/1/06).

106 KSM/Binalshibh described: KSM SUBST, CR, 166–, Fouda & Fielding, 123–, 126, Staff Statement 16, CO;

107 Shehhi left/ailment: ibid., CR, 166, New Yorker, 7/10/06, “PENTTBOM, Summary of Captioned Investigation,” 11/5/01, authors’ collection;

108 “middling”: KSM SUBST;

109 oath: Staff Statement 16, CO, CR, 166–. Shehhi had apparently taken the oath before leaving (CR 166–);

110 OBL considered/select targets: KSM SUBST;

111 Jarrah endured: Fouda & Fielding, 128;

112 tricks of trade: KSM SUBST;

113 airline schedules: Staff Statement 16, CO “learning”/“be normal”: KSM SUBST;

114 phone code: New Yorker, 9/13/10;

115 “PlayStation”: Daily Mail (U.K.), 4/17/10;

116 “worked hard”/Hazmi deputy: KSM SUBST; kunyahs: These kunyahs, and all the honorifics assigned to what became a nineteen-man hijack team, appear in Masterminds of Terror, by Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, 110, 121n15.

117 “wonderful evening”: Clinton, 881;

118 Jordan/Zubaydah: NYT, 1/15/01, Tenet, 125;

119 Ressam caught/plan: Counterterrorism to All Field Stations, FBI 265A-SE-83340, etc., 12/29/1999, INTELWIRE, CR, 176–, Staff Statement 15, CO, Richard Clarke, 211, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 140–, NYT, 12/15/01, Burke, 198–, 208–;

120 “aware”: Burke, 209, Report, JI, Appendix, 44, CR, 261;

121 Clinton rang: Coll, Ghost Wars, 487;

122 Berger met: Shenon, 234, 261;

123 wiretap orders: Farmer, 39;

124 “Foreign”: CR, 179;

125 Berger/Clarke Christmas: Richard Clarke, 213, MFR 04021455, 2/13/04;

126 thousands on duty/vigil: Richard Clarke, Testimony of Louis Freeh, 4/13/04, CO;

127 O’Neill: Miller & Stone, 222–.

128 “I think”/“popped”: Richard Clarke, 214. U.S. intelligence worried not only about December 31 as the date of a possible attack, but also about January 3 and 6. The 3rd is considered a night of destiny in Islam, while January 6, 2000, coincided with the end of Ramadan. As discovered later, an attack was indeed planned for the 3rd—a bombing of the U.S. destroyer Sullivans, which was visiting the Yemeni port of Aden. The explosives-loaded boat, however, sank in the surf before the operation could be carried out. This botched effort preceded by nine months the successful attack on the USS Cole, also in Aden, which is covered in Ch. 25. Walid bin Attash, one of the Yemenis bin Laden initially selected for the 9/11 operation, reportedly played a role in planning both bombings (Jan. 3/6: FBI IG; Sullivans/Attash: Staff Statement 2, CO).

129 “They said”: Benjamin & Simon, 313.

130 “All Islamic”: Staff Report, “Monograph on the Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security,” 8/26/04, CF;

131 1998 exercise: Kean & Hamilton, 109, CR, 345;

132 “bin Laden and his”: CR, 128;

133 “unconventional”: Sunday Times (London), 6/9/02;

134 “America”: “New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century,” Commission on National Security, 9/15/99, www.fas.org. The commission was chaired by former U.S. senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman;

135 Library of Congress report: Rex Hudson, “The Sociology & Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?,” Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 9/99, 7, NYT, 5/18/02.

136 America West/“walked into”/door locked/​alerted/​handcuffs/​interrogation: Judgment, Muhammad Al-Qudhai’een et al. v. America West Airlines et al., Case No. C-2-00-1380, US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, 4/30/03 Manager, Chicago Civil Aviation Security Office to Director, undated FAA Memo, “Other Flights 9/11, FAA Memo re America West 90,” B7, T7, CF, Report, JI, 6;

137 “casing”: MFR 04017521, 1/7/04, MFR 04019354, 7/22/03;

138 “tied”: MFR 04019354, 7/22/03;

139 poster: Statement of Eleanor Hill, 9/24/02 (as supplemented 10/17/02), JI;

140 “explosive”: ibid.

141 arrested with Zubaydah: CR, 521n60. The man who tried the cockpit door was Muhammad al-Qudhai’een and his companion Hamdan al-Shalawi. Both insisted that Qudhai’een had merely wished to find the airplane lavatory. They subsequently sued America West, alleging racial stereotyping, but the suit was dismissed. Qudhai’een, interviewed in Saudi Arabia by 9/11 Commission staff, said he thought the perpetrators of 9/11 were “ignorant” people. In his interview, Shalawi said he recalled having encountered future pilot hijacker Hani Hanjour before the incident on the airplane. He acknowledged having done “charity work” in Afghanistan back in 1987, but denied ever having been there since. Three officers of the Mabahith, Saudi Arabia’s internal security service, were present during the commission’s interviews of both Shalawi and Qudhai’een. The associate with a bin Laden poster on his wall was Zacaria Soubra, then a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona (Qudhai’een, Shalawi sued: Judgment, Muhammad Al-Qudhai’een et al. v. America West Airlines et al., No. C-2–00–1380, US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, 4/30/03; “ignorant”/“charity work”/Mabahith: MFR int. Muhammad al-Qudhai’een, 10/26/03 & MFR int. Hamdan bin al-Shalawi, 10/23/03, “Staff Delegation International Trip,” T1A, CF; Soubra: Statement of Eleanor Hill, 9/24/02 [as supplemented 10/17/02], JI, FBI IG).

142 exploratory trips: Fouda & Fielding, 158, Bergen, OBL I Know, 302;

143 1999 reports: Report, JI, 334, Statements of Eleanor Hill, 9/18/02, 9/24/02 (as supplemented 10/17/02), JI, FBI IG;

144 “The purpose”/found no indication/INS: ibid., Statement of Eleanor Hill, 9/24/02, (as supplemented 10/17/02), JI;

145 “very frustrating”; MFR 04018415, 12/16/03, CF.

CHAPTER 25

1

training camp/​combat/​magazines/​games/​movies:

CR, 157, 493n50, 54;

2

phone directories/English/two Yemenis:

KSM SUBST, CR, 157–.

3

Mihdhar left early:

Detainees’ accounts varied as to whether Mihdhar completed the physical training course. KSM said Mihdhar was not present for the familiarization-with-U.S.-life sessions that Hazmi attended—he had supposedly had similar instruction earlier (CR, 493n50 & 53);

4

on choosing optimal:

ibid., 158, 493n54;

5

Attash dry run/no visas/he learned:

ibid., 158–, KSM SUBST;

6

box cutter/knife:

CR, 159, “Charge Sheet, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” 4/15/08,

www.findlaw.com

;

7

toothpaste/art supplies:

CR, 493n59;

8

ploy worked:

ibid., 159.

9

condominium in K.L.:

ibid. It remains unclear who exactly may have been with the trio at the condominium, which belonged to a former Malaysian army captain named Yazid Sufaat. Their comrade from the training period, Abu Bara al Tai’zi (see notes for Ch. 24), was there. So, too, reportedly, was Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesian terrorist leader known as “Hambali.” In his insightful book

The Looming Tower

, Lawrence Wright wrote that a dozen terrorist associates came and went from the condominium. There have also been unconfirmed reports that KSM and Ramzi Binalshibh joined the group. The claim that KSM was present is unsupported by any available evidence. A senior German police official has referred to evidence, apparently credit card receipts, indicating that Binalshibh was there (Tai’zi/Sufaat: CR, 156–; Isamuddin:

New Straits Times

[Malaysia] 2/10/02,

Time Asia

, 4/1/02 CR, 158; dozen: Wright, 311; KSM: e.g.

Newsweek

, 7/9/03; Binalshibh:

LAT

, 9/1/02,

NYT

, 8/24/020).

10 boarded UA flight/“tourists”: Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel,” CO, 13–, Timeline, “Hijackers Primary Docs, AA77, 2 of 2,” & FBI 302 of Special Agent [redacted], 9/12/01, “Hijackers Primary Docs, AA77, 1 of 2,” B50, T5, CF. After 9/11 it would emerge that U.S. intelligence had been aware, even before it began, that suspected terrorists were to meet in Kuala Lumpur. The men were surveilled while they were there and an attempt was made to follow them afterward, when they left for Thailand. Most stunning of all, the CIA knew even before Mihdhar reached Kuala Lumpur that he had a current visa to enter the United States. Within months, moreover, it learned the equally alarming fact that Hazmi had entered the United States. Agency spokesmen have claimed that, even so, the CIA took no action until just before 9/11. Why not? The issue is of enormous significance and will be covered in Ch. 31 (e.g., Staff Statement 2, CO, CR, 353–, FBI IG).

11 no “facilitator”: KSM SUBST;

12 Commission not believe: CR, 215;

13 no trace: CR, 514n8, Staff Statement 16, CO, MFR 040204580, 6/23–24/04, CF.

14 chauffeur/“two Saudis”/“an apartment”/tour: int. of Qualid Benomrane, FBI 302, 265A-LA-228901, 4/6/02, INTELWIRE. The statements of the driver, a Tunisian named Qualid Benomrane, contain unresolved issues. He did not, for example, have an official taxi driver’s license until several months after Hazmi and Mihdhar’s arrival. Benomrane said it was Fahad al-Thumairy, an imam at the King Fahd mosque, who asked him to drive the two Saudis around—at the request, in turn, of someone at the Saudi consulate. At one point, however, he said the “two Saudis” were sons of a sick father seeking treatment in Los Angeles—which would not fit Hamzi and Mihdhar. Thumairy, for his part, denied knowing Benomrane but said he did know a “son and sick father.” Commission staff who interviewed Thumairy in Saudi Arabia, however, judged him “deceptive.”

9/11 Commission senior counsel Dieter Snell asserted in a 2004 memo that Benomrane’s information appeared to be of “uniquely significant value” to understanding the facts behind the 9/11 attacks. Benomrane had by then been deported from the United States, however, and the Commission never did interview him. Journalist Judith Miller reported in 2007 that Los Angeles Police Department detectives were convinced that “Benomrane and al-Thumairy were militants in the al Qaeda support network and that Benomrane’s passengers were, in fact, the two hijackers” (license: e.g. MFR 04018787, 4/19/04, MFR 04018782, 4/21/04; Thumairy: CR, 515n14, Line of Inquiry: Qualid Moncef Benomrane, B36, T1A, CF; sons of sick father: int. Qualid Benomrane, FBI 302, 265A-LA-228901, 4/6/02; Thumairy denied: MFR 04019362, 2/23/04; “deceptive”: Dieter Snell et al. to Philip Zelikow, 2/25/04, Summary of Interview Conducted in Saudi Arabia, ARC Identifier no. 2610841, CF; “uniquely”: Dieter Snell to Pat O’Brien, 1/16/04, “Benomrane Folder,” B37, T1A, CF; deported/never interviewed: CR, 515n14; LAPD convinced: Judith Miller, “On the Front Line in the War on Terrorism,” Summer 07,

www.city-journal.org

).

15 photographs: CR, 515n14;

16 “barely”/“instructed”: KSM SUBST;

17 address in CA: CR, 150, 514n4, Guardian (U.K.), 11/12/06, Telegraph (U.K.), 11/7/06;

18 CIA concluded: CR, 514n4;

19 “possibly” Long Beach: CR, 157, 514n7;

20 language schools LA: CR, 216;

21 San Diego directories: KSM SUBST;

22 “idea”: ibid.;

23 Bayoumi 42: DHS Document Request 3, “Doc Requests, Entire Contents,” T5, B9, CF;

24 rental application: San Diego Union-Tribune, 10/25/01;

25 Bayoumi employee/mosque, etc.: ibid., FBI IG;

26 “ghost”: CR, 515n18, Don/trip to LA/​consulate/​restaurant: MFR of int. Omar al Bayoumi, 10/16–17/003, “Staff Delegation International Trip, Tab 1,” T1A, MFR 04017552, 9/29/03, & MFR 04019254, 4/20/04, CF, FBI 302 of int. Caysan bin Don, 10/8/01, INTELWIRE, CR, 217–, 515n15, 17. Bin Don has also used the name Isamu Dyson. His birth name was Clayton Morgan (CR, 435);

27 newspaper: McDermott, 189;

28 “description”/sought out/apartment: MFR of int. Bayoumi, MFR 04016481, 1/12/04, National Drug Enforcement Center for the FBI, “265D-NY-280350, TWINBOM-PENTTBOM, Biographical Report,” 11/26/01, authors’ collection;

29 pure chance: MFR 04019254, 4/20/04, MFR 04016231, 11/18/03, CF;

30 “to pick up”: Report, JI, 173;

31 contacts imam: Dieter Snell, et al., to Philip Zelikow, “Summary of Interviews in Saudi Arabia,” 2/25/04, MFR, CF;

32 cell phone: MFR, 040175541A, 11/17/03, CF, CR, 516n26;

33 jihad material/salary: Report, JI, 174;

34 distinguishing mark: CR, 516n19;

35 “We do not”: CR 218;

36 “very suspicious”: int. Eleanor Hill.

37 “We firmly”: Newsweek, 8/3/03. As noted earlier in this chapter, KSM has denied that there were helpers in place in the U.S. He also specifically denied that he had ever heard of Bayoumi (CR, 516n19, CBS News, 8/3/03);

38 Aulaqi 29/imam: FBI Memo, “Ansar Nasser Aulaqi, IT-UBL,” 9/26/01, INTELWIRE;

39 four calls: MFR 04017541A, 11/17/03 & MFR 04017531, 11/17/03, CF, “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, CR, 221, 517n33;

40 attended mosque: CR, 517n33, MFR 04017542, 11/18/03, CF;

41 “closed-door”: Report, JI, 178, NYT, 5/8/10, Jamie Reno, “Public Enemy #1,” www.sandiegomagazine.com;

42 Hazmi respected/spoke: MFR of [name redacted], 4/23/04, CF—since reported to have been Abdussattar Shaikh;

43 “very calm”: FBI Memo, “Ansar Nasser Aulaqi, IT-UBL,” 9/26/01, INTELWIRE;

44 “spiritual advisor”: Report, JI, 27.

45 Aulaqi relocated/no contact: The record seems contradictory on this. The Commission Report quoted Aulaqi as denying having had contact in Virginia with Hazmi or his companion at that point, future fellow hijacker Hani Hanjour. A May 2004 Commission memo, however, states that Aulaqi “admits contact with the hijackers” at both the Virginia and San Diego mosques. (CR, 229–, MFR 04019202, 5/6/04).

46 had investigated/​“procurement”: CR, 517n33;

47 “potentially”: CR, 221;

48 prison: WP, 2/27/08;

49 terrorist attacks: (Fort Hood shooting/bomb on Detroit-bound plane/Times Square car bomb) Christian Science Monitor, 5/19/10, Fox News, 10/20/10, CNN, 1/7/10, Guardian (U.K.), 10/31/10, MSNBC, 11/1/10;

50 Harman: Christian Science Monitor, 5/19/10;

51 KSM suggested: KSM SUBST;

52 passes Zoo/SeaWorld: LAT, 9/1/02;

53 bank accounts/car/ID: FBI IG, Staff Report, Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” CO, MFR.

54 driver’s licenses/phone directory: CR, 539n85, Lance, Triple Cross, 349. The two terrorists moved in May 2000 to the home of a man named Abdussattar Shaikh, and—though Mihdhar left that summer—Hazmi stayed until December. Shaikh, the subject of controversy not least because he was an FBI informant, will be covered in the notes for Ch. 33 (CR, 220, 516n28, MFR of [name redacted], 4/23/04, CF, www.scribd.com, Nawaf al-Hazmi timeline, “Hijacker Primary Documents,” B50, T5, CF, Graham with Nussbaum, Shaikh refs., Shenon, 53–);

55 sociable/​“brooding”: Corbin, 174—, Newsweek, 6/10/02;

56 soccer/​“psychotic”: CR 220, MFR 04017531, 11/17/03, CF;

57 “You’ll know”: Newsweek, 6/10/02;

58 phone calls/computer/Yahoo: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Bamford, Shadow Factory, 25;

59 KSM told: KSM SUBST;

60 Hazmi enrolled/Mihdhar not start: ibid., Staff Statement 16, CO, CR, 221, 517n30, 36, FBI 302 of int. Omer Bakarbashat, 9/17/01, INTELWIRE;

61 flight school/few lessons: CR, 221–, 517n36;

62 praying: Corbin, 174;

63 “They just”/“Dumb”: Newsweek, 6/10/02;

64 flying not for them: WP, 9/30/01.

65 dropped out/flew back: KSM SUBST, CR, 220. Though Mihdhar supposedly went home to rejoin his family, he also went on to travel to Malaysia, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. FBI director Mueller suggested to Congress’s Joint Inquiry that his role may have included helping to organize the so-called muscle hijackers. (CR, 222, Statement of Robert Mueller, JI, 9/26/02).

66 overruled/progressive: KSM SUBST.

67 shed clothing/beards: CR, 167, FBI report, “The 11 September Hijacker Cell Model,” 2/03, INTELWIRE.

68 31 emails/“We are”/“lost”/new passports: Testimony of George Tenet, 6/18/02, JI, CR, 168, 497n108, Transcript of Jury Trial, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, 3/7/06. Atta had entered a lottery for a U.S. visa as early as October the previous year, perhaps a further indication that he knew something of the bin Laden plan before heading to Afghanistan in November. He applied for and got a visa in the regular way, however, only in May 2000 (MFR 04019351, 12/10–11/03, Staff Report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel,” CO, 15–).

69 Binalshibh: Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, CO, 17–, CR, 225, 519n52. Binalshibh applied for a visa three times in the year 2000, each time unsuccessfully;

70 Shehhi/Atta to NY: Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, CO, 15;

71 Bronx/Brooklyn: Staff Statement 16, CO, Report, JI, 136;

72 calling card: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Bamford, Shadow Factory, 53;

73 Jarrah arrives: Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, CO, 17;

74 flight school: MFR 04019350, 3/18/04, CF, Herald-Tribune (Sarasota), 9/10/06;

75 “He was”: Corbin, 160, & see MFR 04018408, 4/12/04, CF;

76 “occasional”: Fouda & Fielding, 131;

77 Private Pilot License/aviation mechanics: CR, 224, biographical note “Ziad Jarrah,” FBI 03212, JICI 4/19/02, www.scribd.com, “Airman Records for Jarrah,” B45, T5, CF;

78 “He wanted”: Corbin, 161;

79 Oklahoma school/FBI regional office: Statement of Eleanor Hill re “The FBI’s Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to Sept. 11, 2001,” 9/24/02 (as updated 10/17/02), JI.

80 toured school: Title: PENTTBOM, “Summary of Captioned Investigation as of 11/4/01,” 11/5/01, authors’ collection, CR, 224. The two hijackers’ visit was to Airman Flight School, where bin Laden pilot Ihab Ali had trained several years earlier. Zacarias Moussaoui, who was part of KSM’s wider operation and would be arrested shortly before 9/11, would also train at Airman, in early 2001 (Ali: CR, 224, “Paving the Road to 9/11,” www.intelwire.com; Moussaoui: “Paving the Road to 9/11,” www.intelwire.com, CR, 246, 273–).

81 Huffman: CR, 224. Daniel Hopsicker, an author who has concentrated on the hijackers’ Venice stay, has written extensively about Venice Airport and those who operated flight schools there in 2000. In a 2009 article, he reported having discovered “covert CIA and military operations dating back to at least 1959” involving the airport. Hopsicker has focused on information indicating that the airport has a history of narcotics trafficking. He refers, too, to the seizure in July 2000—the month Atta and Shehhi began flight training—of a Learjet co-owned by Wallace Hilliard, the financier behind Huffman Aviation, with a large shipment of heroin on board. Hilliard maintained that he was the “innocent owner” of the plane. Huffman’s Rudi Dekkers, for his part, had what the St. Petersburg Times termed “a checkered history” of bankruptcies, business problems, and visa issues (he is a Dutch national). According to the Times, he was cited by the FAA in 1999 for several violations, and his pilot’s license was suspended. In interviews with a law enforcement official and an aviation executive, the authors got the impression that Venice Airport has indeed seen much illegal activity over the years. A Commission staff memo suggests that Atta and Shehhi were accepted as students of Huffman without strict adherence to INS regulations—sloppy procedure that had the effect of legitimizing their continued stay in the United States. It may conceivably be of significance that Yeslam bin Laden, one of Osama’s half-brothers, had paid for an acquaintance’s flight instruction at the school—a bizarre fact that may be no more than a coincidence (Hopsicker: Daniel Hopsicker, Welcome to Terrorland, Eugene, OR: MadCow, 2004/2007; CIA: “Big Safari, the Kennedy Assassination, & the War for Control of the Venice Airport,” 9/9/09, “The Deep History of the Venice Municipal Airport,” 9/21 & 9/24/09, “Venice Was a Quiet Mena, Arkansas,” 4/16/10, www.madcowprod.com, Hopsicker, 128–; Hilliard: Orlando Sentinel, 8/2/00; Aircraft Bill of Sale, N351WB, U.S. Dept. of Transportation (FAA), World Jet, Inc., to Plane I Leasing—Wallace J. Hilliard, President, filed 11/15/99, Hearing on Motion of Forfeiture Proceedings, U.S. v. Edgar Javier Valles-Diaz, et al., U.S. District Court for the Middle District of FL, 11/3/00; Dekkers: St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/04; Commission/​legitimizing: Kephart-Robert to Ginsberg, 2/26/04, “Hijacker Pilot Training,” B21, T7, CF; interviews: ints. Coy Jacobs & FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force agent; Yeslam: New Yorker, 11/12/01).

82 No reliable source: McDermott, 195;

83 “had an attitude”/“likeable”: transcript int. Rudi Dekkers, Four Corners: A Mission to Die For, 10/18/01, www.abc.net.au;

84 “When you”/​immaculate/​“Generally”: int. Mark Mikarts;

85 no better/another school/failed/argued: FBI 302 of int. Ivan Chirivella, 9/16/01, INTELWIRE, Corbin, 10–, “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, CR, 224, WSJ, 10/16/01;

86 “a gesture”/​Saudi/​cushion: transcript of int. Ann Greaves, Four Corners: A Mission to Die For, 10/18/01, www.abc.net.au;

87 “I don’t want”: “Mohammed Atta’s Last Will & Testament, Frontline: “Inside the Terror Network,” www.pbs.org, NYT, 10/4/01;

88 “We had female”: int. Mark Mikarts;

89 “very rude”: FBI 302 of Ivan Chirivella, 9/16/01, INTELWIRE;

90 Outlook bar: int. Lizsa Lehman. Allegations that several members of the terrorist team—Atta included—indulged in heavy drinking at bars in Florida in the days prior to the attack are covered in Ch. 28, on this page. Reports of Atta’s heavy drinking are probably apocryphal. Lizsa Lehman’s firsthand recollection of Atta and Shehhi drinking beer in moderation at the Outlook, however, seems credible.

91 Jarrah License: MFR 04021445, 1/13 & 1/25/04, CF, Staff Statement 16, CO;

92 fall trip/​Paris/​photographed: Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, CO, 21–, [Name Redacted] to [Name Redacted], INS, 9/19/01, re Saeed A.A. Al Ghamdi, & attachments, “Inspector Interviews, UA 93, Notes & Memos,” B49, T5, CF;

93 “I love you”: McDermott, 198;

94 Mitsubishi: Jarrah timeline, “03009470, Packet 6, Ziad Jarrah chronology,” www.scribd.com;

95 Bahamas: Report of Investigation, U.S. Customs Service, Case no. TA09FR01TA003, & Letter re plane piloted by Jarrah, N833OU, “Hijacker Primary Docs, UA 93,” B51, T5, CF;

96 Atta/Shehhi licenses: MFR 04021445, 1/13 & 1/25/04, CF, Staff Statement 16, CO;

97 Christmas trip: Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, CO, 21–;

98 abandoned plane: MFR 04021445, 1/13 & 1/25/04, CF, Testimony of Rudi Dekkers, Subcommittee on Immigration & Claims, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Reps., 107th Cong., 2nd Sess., 3/19/02;

99 videos: Indictment, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, 12/01;

100 727 simulator/“They just”: Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland), 9/15/01, NYT, 9/14/01, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE.

101 Some have argued: Skeptics have questioned whether Hani Hanjour had the piloting skill to fly American 77 into the Pentagon at almost ground level. While some flying instructors commented on his inadequacies, however, others recalled having found him competent. One, who flew with Hanjour in August 2001, went so far as to describe him as a “good” pilot. (Skeptics: e.g., Griffin, New Pearl Harbor, 78–; inadequacies/competent: e.g., CBS News, 5/10/02, Newsday, 9/23/01; “good”: MFR 0401840, 4/9/04—citing Eddie G. Shalev. Contrary to an assertion by skeptic Griffin, who questioned the existence of instructor Shalev, 9/11 Commission files contain the record of an interview of him by a commission staffer and an accompanying FBI agent. Shalev, moreover, is listed in various public records. Griffin, New Pearl Harbor, 286n99, & see, e.g., www.intelius.com.)

102 767 simulator: ibid., Statement of Robert Mueller, JI, 9/26/02, Transcript of Jury Trial, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Vol. II-A, 3/7/06. Jarrah and Hani Hanjour, the other 9/11 hijack pilots, also trained on simulators (CR, 226–, Testimony of James Fitzgerald, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, 3/7/06).

103 OBL impatient 2000: CR, 251. The authors here cite the date used in the Commission Report, which in turn refers to KSM interrogations of 2003 and 2004. The longer account of KSM’s statements, the one generally used in this book, states that bin Laden tried in spring 2000 to bring the attacks forward—surely unlikely, as he well knew the hijack pilots had at that time barely embarked on their training (CR 250, 532n177, KSM SUBST).

104 KSM resisted/new candidate: KSM SUBST, MFR 04019351, 12/10–11/03, CF;

105 well-to-do: BG, 3/3/02, WP, 9/10/02;

106 back and forth: Statement of Robert Mueller, JI, 9/26/02, Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, 12, WP, 9/10/02;

107 Hanjour license: MFR 04021445, 1/13 & 1/25/04, CF, copies of license documents, “Airman Records—Hanjour,” B45, T5, CF;

108 pretending: WP, 9/10/02, BG, 3/3/02;

109 “frail”: FBI 302 of [name redacted], 9/18/01, “FBI 302s of Interest,” B17, T7, CF;

110 “quiet”: MFR 04017517, 1/7/04, CF;

111 “mouse”: McDermott, 204;

112 drink/pray: MFR 04017518, 1/5/04, CF;

113 in tears: CR, 520n55;

114 Afghanistan at 17: Report, JI, 135, Staff Statement 16, CO;

115 Atef sent KSM/KSM dispatched/thought: KSM SUBST;

116 Hanjour to U.S./Hazmi/flight school: Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, CO, 19–, Statement of Robert Mueller, JI, 9/26/02, CR, 226;

117 school owner/“No”: WP, 10/21/01, 9/10/02, Newsday, 9/23/01;

118 “content”/“warrior”: The Times (London), 9/20/01;

119 “ ’Orwah”: Fouda & Fielding, 111.

120 computer/“I went”: transcript of int. Ann Greaves, Four Corners: A Mission to Die For, 10/18/01, www.abc.net.au, ints. Mark Mikart; Cole: Katz, 269–, Miller & Stone, 226–, Wright, 319–, Graham with Nussbaum, 59–, Fox News, 1/13/09;

121 OBL deny/praise: ABC News, 3/1/00;

122 A destroyer: Time, 9/24/01, Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, 229, Wright, 333;

123 “With small”: Newsweek, 9/24/01.

124 “To those”: Clinton address, 10/18/00, http://usinfo.org;

125 “Let’s hope”: NYT, 10/13/01;

126 “What’s it gonna”: Richard Clarke, 224;

127 “major”: State of the Union address in WP, 1/27/00;

128 “not satisfactory”: CR, 187, Report, JI, 301. National Security Adviser Berger dated this memo as February 2000. Without giving a clear source, the 9/11 Commission dated it as early March (Report, JI, 301, CR 187, 505n99);

129 Predator: Staff Statement 7, CO, CR, 506n118, 513n238;

130 negotiations: CounterPunch, 1/16/08, 9/9/09, 11/1/04, Reuters, 6/4/04;

131 U.N. resolution: Resolution 1333, 12/19/00, http://avalon.law.yale. edu;

132 Tenet warned: Tenet, 128.

133 Pakistani told FBI: Statement of Eleanor Hill, 9/18/02, JI, NBC News, 7/26/04, Sunday Times (London), 2/13/05. The Pakistani was Niaz Kahn, a former waiter from Oldham, near Manchester in the U.K., who apparently became involved in terrorism not because of his ideals but because he needed money. Two men he met in the U.K., he said, encouraged him to go to a camp in Pakistan, where he was given instruction in “conventional” hijackings, not suicide operations. He was eventually flown by a roundabout route to New York, but evaded the contact waiting for him and went to the FBI. Kahn’s story was first reported publicly in late 2004 (NBC News, 7/26/04, Vanity Fair, 11/04, transcript, int. Niaz Khan, 5/18/04, in collection of Jean-Charles Brisard).

134 Italian police/“studying”: int. Bruno Megale, Bergen, OBL I Know, 281, Miller & Stone, 274–. A U.S. Justice Department official was quoted after 9/11 as saying that a “small cadre of U.S. intelligence experts might have been privy to the Italian surveillance material.” On the other hand, other press reporting suggests that the surveillance of the two Yemenis was “not translated by Italian police” until May 2002 (LAT, 5/29/02, Chicago Tribune, 10/8/02).

135 Olympics: Sydney Morning Herald, 9/20/01. In October, the Defense Department held a tabletop exercise simulating the crash of an airliner into the courtyard of the Pentagon. Critics have cited this as an indication that the Pentagon received early intelligence of terrorist plans to target the building with an airplane. On the evidence, however, the exercise may simply have been designed to ensure readiness for any possible sort of plane crash into the Pentagon—which is close to Reagan National Airport (“Contingency Planning Pentagon MASCAL Exercise,” 11/3/00, www.dcmilitary.com, UPI, 4/22/04).

136 FBI/FAA downplayed: In April 2000, an FAA advisory issued to airlines and airports had stated that U.S. airliners could be targeted but that hijacking was “more probable outside the United States.” The advisory would not have been replaced as of September 11, 2001 (Staff Report, “The Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security,” 8/26/04, CF, 59);

137 “do not suggest”: Statement of Eleanor Hill, 9/18/02, JI, Report, JI, 104–;

138 “imprudent”: Report, JI, 334.

139 “Americans would”: CR, 198;

140 Clinton authorized: Tenet, 135;

141 Cheney/Powell/Rice: Testimony of Sandy Berger, 3/24/04, CO, Time, 8/12/02, DeYoung, 344;

142 “As I briefed”: Richard Clarke, 229;

143 “sitting”/“cognizant”: Rice int., www.whitehouse.gov, 3/24/04, Testimony, 4/8/04, CO;

144 did not know: Richard Clarke, 31;

145 “not an amateur”: ibid., 328;

146 Commission/“on American”: Phase III Report, Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change, U.S. Commission on National Security, 2/15/01, viii, 6, Tenet, 16, Columbia Journalism Review, Nov/Dec 2001;

147 pressed to see: Hurley to Gorelick, 4/5/04, “Commissioner Prep for Rice,” B7, T3, CF;

148 “did not remember”: CR, 199, Ben-Veniste, 302–;

149 OBL biggest/“listened”: Clinton, 935–.

CHAPTER 26

1

“We are not”:

George W. Bush, Inaugural Address, 1/20/01,

www.bartleby.com

,

Time

, 1/20/01;

2

“empty rhetoric”:

WP

, 1/20/02;

3

“They ridiculed”:

int. of Clinton for Fox News, 9/24/06;

4

“What we did”:

“Report: Rice Challenges Clinton on Osama,”

http://wcbstv.com

, 9/26/06;

5

“I’m tired”:

CR, 202 & see Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO, CR, 510n185, int. of Stephen Hadley,

60 Minutes

, CBS, 3/21/04;

6

“just solve”:

“Transcript: Clarke Praised Bush Team in 02,” Fox News, 3/24/04.

7

nothing effective done:

As Rice recalled it, it was in May that the President told her he was tired of swatting at flies. Clarke said Bush’s directive came to him in March. Bush did write to President Musharraf in February 2001, emphasizing that bin Laden was a threat to the United States that “must be addressed.” Though he urged Musharraf to use his influence with the Taliban over bin Laden, the approach proved unproductive. So were further Bush administration contacts with the Pakistanis later in the year (Rice/Clarke: CR, 510n185; Musharraf: CR, 207).

8

memo/“not some narrow”/“multiple”:

Clarke to Rice & attachments, 1/25/01,

www2.gwu.edu

. The memorandum and the December 2000 “Strategy” document have been released, with some redactions. The September 1998 “Political-Military Plan DELENDA” [a reference to the vow to destroy Carthage, in the days of ancient Rome] has not been released (Clarke to Rice, 1/25/01, & Tab A, released to National Security Archive,

www2.gwu.edu

, CR, 120, Richard Clarke, 197–).

9

Cole

linked al Qaeda:

FBI IG;

10 “No al Qaeda plan”: WP, 3/22/04;

11 no recommendations: Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO;

12 “Having served”: int. Eleanor Hill;

13 no longer member/instead report: CR, 200, 509n169, Clarke, 230;

14 no retaliation for Cole: CR, 201–;

15 “tit-for-tat”: Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO & see Ben-Veniste, 304–;

16 “ancient history”: MFR 04018415, 12/16/03, CF;

17 deputies not meet/April: CR, 203, Richard Clarke, 231;

18 Wolfowitz/tetchy: Richard Clarke, 231;

19 “We are going”: Benjamin & Simon, 336.

20 “to be paying”: “Big Media Networks Ignore Gorelick Role, Highlight Bremer Rebuke of Bush Team,” 4/30/04, citing Bremer int. for CBS News, 2/26/01, www.freerepublic.com, LAT, 4/30/04. Three years later, by which time he had become U.S. administrator in occupied Iraq, Bremer would attempt to backtrack and say his 2001 comment had been “unfair” to Bush, that his speech had reflected frustration that none of the National Commission’s recommendations had been implemented by either the Clinton or the new Bush administration. (AP, 5/2/04);

21 “The highest”: DCI’s Worldwide Threat Briefing, 2/7/01, www.cia.gov; Le Monde scoop: “11 Septembre 2001: Les Français en savaient long,” Le Monde, 4/16/07.

22 passed on to CIA: The DGSE document, one of more than three hundred pages leaked, is dated January 5, 2001, and numbered 00007/CT. Its heading reads: “Note de Synthèse—Projet de Détournement d’Avion par des Islamistes Radicaux,” and it draws on information passed on by the intelligence service of Uzbekistan. The overall dossier leaked is entitled “Oussama bin Laden” and dated 9/13/01. The authors have seen the entire dossier. The celebrated French fortnightly, Le Canard Enchaîné, reporting on the material as early as October 2001, stated that “most” of the reports on bin Laden had been shared with the CIA and the FBI. Le Monde, in its major story of April 19, 2007, reported as a fact that the January 5 report was passed to the CIA. Le Monde quoted former senior DGSE official Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi as saying that such information would have been passed to the Agency as a matter of routine. Alain Chouet, former head of the Security Intelligence department, took the same view when interviewed by the authors (attachment, James to Zelikow, 4/14/04, “Motley Submission,” B10, T2, CF).

23 FAA 50 summaries/no action: Staff Report, “The Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security,” CO, Farmer, 96–, New York Observer, 6/20/04;

24 met Tenet almost daily: Tenet, 137;

25 40 PDBs: CR, 254.

26 Atta January trip: Staff Statement 16, CO. Atta flew to and back from Europe via Madrid, leaving on January 4 and returning on January 10. There is evidence suggesting he was in Berlin during that period, and the Commission Report states that his purpose in going was to see Binalshibh in Germany. It has been suggested that Madrid was more than a stopover en route to Germany, that at one point in the round-trip from the States Atta paused to meet a contact in Spain. An al Qaeda cell was active in Spain at the time. An allegation that Atta made another trip to Europe in April, during which he met with an Iraqi official in Prague, will be covered in Ch. 34 and related notes (trip: Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, CO, 23–, “Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE; Binalshibh: CR, 227, 243 Staff Statement 16, CO; contact/cell: Der Spiegel, 10/27/03, CR, 530n145; Prague: CR, 228).

27 Shehhi Morocco: Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, CO, 26–, 215n95;

28 Jarrah reentered/Aysel to U.S./Key West/tourist: Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, CO, 21–.

29 Atta hurdle/Shehhi referred/“I thought”: Staff Report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, CO, 22–, FBI int. [name redacted], Primary Inspector for Atta on 1/10/01, 11/27/01, “Inspector Interviews, AA11” B49, T5, CF & see “The Immigration & Naturalization Service’s Contacts with Two September 11 Terrorists,” Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 5/20/02. In early May, Atta and two companions—one of whom was probably Jarrah—would go to the Miami Immigration Office to try to get the visa of one of the trio extended to eight months. The inspector not only declined that request but shortened Atta’s own permitted stay to six months. Atta left without making a fuss. The second of his companions, the inspector came to suspect after 9/11, had been Adnan Shukrijumah. Shukrijumah, believed to have been an al Qaeda operative reporting to bin Laden, had as of this writing long been on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Though born in Saudi Arabia, he was entitled to live in the United States—his family had moved to Florida in the mid-1990s, but left the country shortly before 9/11. Shukrijumah’s late father, an imam, had once served at the al-Farooq mosque in Brooklyn, the hub for jihadi recruiting during the anti-Soviet war (INS visit: [name redacted] Immigration Inspector to Mr. Garofano, 10/23/01, appointment list for May 2, 2001, follow-up interviews, Miami District Office, INS, 4/16/02, & MFR of [name redacted] Customs & Border Protection, 3/25/04, “Inspector Interviews,” B49, T5, CF, Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, CO, 30–; Shukrijumah: Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, CO, 216n114, 256n138, CNN, 8/6/10, NY Daily News, 8/6/10, “Father Knows Terrorism Best,” 10/27/03, www.frontpagemag.com, Newsweek, 4/7/04, NYT, 9/3/06).

30 Atta/Shehhi turned up/rented/asked: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Counterterrrorism to All Field Offices, 9/15/01, FBI 265A-NY-280350, Serial 2268, released under FOIA to Mike Williams of www.911myths.com, FBI memorandum, PENTTBOM, Summary of captioned investigation as of 11/4/01, 11/5/01, authors’ collection, AP, 10/19/01, WP, 12/16/01.

31 optional targets: KSM SUBST. Separately, there was to be much reference to a claim by Johnelle Bryant, a loan officer for the Department of Agriculture in Homestead, Florida, that Atta came to her office to inquire about a loan to buy a plane for conversion into a crop duster. When told he did not qualify, she said, he made threats, spoke of the destruction of U.S. monuments, and praised bin Laden. Bryant dated the incident as having occurred between late April and mid-May 2000. So far as is known, however, Atta did not arrive in the United States until June 3, 2000 (Timeline Pertaining to Hijackers in Florida, “Timelines 9/11, 2 of 2,” B20, T7, CF, ABC News, 6/6/02, Edward Epstein, “The Terror Crop Dusters,” www.edwardjayepstein.com, but see Miller & Stone, 268–).

32 Hanjour certificate: Hani Hanjour, AA Flight 77, FBI summary 03096, 4/19/02, www.scribd.com, Counterterrrorism to All Field Offices, 9/15/01, FBI 265A-NY-280350, Serial 2268, released under FOIA to Mike Williams of www.911myths.com, FBI 302 of int. FNU Milton, 4/12/02, INTELWIRE, CR, 226–;

33 Sporty’s video: Hijackers’ Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

34 Grand Canyon: Nawaf al-Hazmi, AA Flight 77, FBI summary 03177, 4/19/02, www.scribd.com;

35 greet muscle: Bamford, Shadow Factory, 50, Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, CO, 29–.

36 new arrivals/“The Hour”: CR, 231, BG, 3/3/02, 3/4/02. The thirteen were: Satam al-Suqami, Wail al-Shehri, Waleed al-Shehri, Abdul Aziz al-Omari, Ahmed al-Ghamdi, Hamza al-Ghamdi, Mohand al-Shehri, Majed Moqed, Salem al-Hazmi, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmad al-Haznawi, and Ahmed al-Nami—all Saudis—and Fayez Banihammad, from the UAE. Also in the muscle group on 9/11 would be Hamzi and Mihdhar (the latter having arrived back in the United States as of early July). The group included two pairs of brothers, Nawaf and Salem al-Hazmi and Wail and Waleed al-Shehri—though Mohand al-Shehri was unrelated. The three Ghamdis appear to have been not close relatives but merely members of the large Ghamdi tribe. Saudi press reports noted that in Saudi Arabia “the names al Ghamdi and al Shehri are as common as the name Smith in the United States” (CR, 231, 237, Arab News, 9/18/01, 9/20/01, 9/22/01, BG, 3/3/02).

37 OBL picked: CR, 235;

38 5’7”: ibid., 231;

39 martyr: ibid., 234;

40 visa easy/Express: Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, CO, 32–, 111–, CR, 235, “teater”/“Wasantwn”: Non-immigrant Visa Application of Wail al-Shehri, Joel Mowbray, “Visas for Terrorists,” National Review, archived at www.webcitation.org;

41 “did not think”: Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, CO, 125, MFR 04016462, 12/5/03, CF;

42 sky marshals: CR, 236;

43 butcher/“to muddy”/told Dubai: KSM SUBST.

44 travel pairs/​“businessman”/​tourists/​unsatisfactory: Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, CO, 29–, Janice Kephart, “The Complete Immigration Story of 9/11 Hijacker Satam al Suqami,” 9/10, www.cis.org. The authors refer here to documentation that was inadequate on its face, but passed muster at Immigration or Customs control. Four of the muscle hijackers, meanwhile, had markers in their passports later understood to have been signs of tampering associated with al Qaeda (Staff Report, 9/11 Terrorist Travel, 29, 33, 34).

45 prior arrangement: KSM SUBST;

46 flew DC/NY: Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, CO, 29–;

47 Atta/Hazmi/money: CR, 237;

48 videos/“We left”: Guardian (U.K.), 4/16/02, Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, NY: Columbia Univ. Press, 2006, 133, CR 235, 525n104. The first hijacker videotape was released in April 2002 (Guardian [U.K.], 4/16/02).

49 Massoud/“If President Bush”: Roy Gutman, How We Missed the Story, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2008, 246–; Steve Coll, “Ahmad Shah Massoud Links with CIA,” 2/23/04, www.rawa.org, WP, 1/19 & 20/02;

50 “gained limited”: Defense Intelligence Agency, cable, “IIR [redacted]/The Assassination of Massoud Related to 11 September 2001 Attack,” 11/21/01, as released to the National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu, Schroen, 95–;

51 “was sending”: Tenet, 156;

52 Cairo/“We knew”: NYT, 6/4/02;

53 “something big was coming”: MFR 03009296, 11/3/03, MFR 04017179, 10/3/03;

54 Freeh/Ashcroft/denied: Newsweek, 5/27/02;

55 briefing documents/“public profile”: Staff Statement 10, CO, Shenon, 151–. The exception is the PDB of August 6, which is covered later in this chapter;

56 triumphalist speeches: Bergen, OBL I Know, 293–, Orange County Weekly, 9/7/02;

57 “They send”: The Australian, 12/21/07, The Age (Melbourne), 12/21/07;

58 “All the people”: Guardian (U.K.), 11/28/02;

59 Mihdhar/“I will make”: Bamford, Shadow Factory, 64;

60 “the success”: CR, 251;

61 “It’s time”: Fouda & Fielding, 166.

62 Taliban asked: CR, 251. The Taliban appear to have been concerned not only about U.S. reprisals, but also as to what bin Laden should target. Taliban leader Mullah Omar reportedly favored attacking Jews—not necessarily the United States. Emails found later on the terrorist computer obtained by Wall Street Journal reporter Cullison show there was also dissension amongst the terrorists as to whether to give bin Laden full support at this time. “Going on,” one writer complained, “is like fighting ghosts and windmills” (CR, 250–, WSJ, 7/2/02).

63 MBC reporter/“some news”/“coffin”: In the Footsteps of Bin Laden, 8/23/06, www.cnn.com, Bergen, OBL I Know, 284–. According to CIA reporting of KSM’s interrogations, KSM and Atef “were concerned about this lack of discretion and urged bin Laden not to make additional comments about the plot.” It seems odd then that Atef, normally described as having been professional, should have taken part in the MBC interview. He may have hoped at least to blur the truth by referring to the coming attacks as targeting “American and Israeli interests”—thus avoiding giving away the fact that the attack would be on U.S. territory. If that was his intention, the deception was successful—many in the U.S. had the impression that the attack would take place overseas (“were concerned”: KSM SUBST, Atef: CR, refs.; successful: e.g. CR, 256–).

64 impatient/Cole: KSM SUBST, e.g. Mehnaz Sahibzada, “The Symbolism of the Number 7 in Islamic Culture and Rituals,” www.wadsworth.com;

65 dreams: e.g., Fouda & Fielding, 109, Lacey, Inside the Kingdom, 21, WP, 9/11/02;

66 OBL bombarded/Sharon visit/Arafat not invited: KSM SUBST, NYT, 6/20/01;

67 “big gift”: Bergen, OBL I Know, 284–.

68 “like Captain Ahab”: Richard Clarke, 234;

69 “Clarke was driving”: Conclusions from Review of NSC papers, “Misc. 9/11 Commission Staff Notes About Drafting Final Report,” 16095055, CF;

70 “When these attacks”: CR, 256;

71 rated a seven: Tenet, 145–;

72 was “recruiting”/high alert: CR, 256–;

73 “very, very”/Clarke duly: CR, 257, Bamford, Shadow Factory, 55;

74 July 10 assessment/“There will”/“put his elbows”: Tenet, 150–.

75 “felt”/“The decision”/“Adults”: Bob Woodward, State of Denial, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006, 49–. It seems clear from this passage—in his 2006 book, State of Denial—that he interviewed Cofer Black. Also, perhaps, former CIA director Tenet. While Woodward reported that Tenet left the meeting “feeling frustrated,” Tenet stated in his memoir the following year that Black and the head of the Agency’s bin Laden unit departed feeling that “at last … we had gotten the full attention of the administration.” Within two days, a congressional report shows, Tenet went to the Capitol to give a similar briefing to U.S. senators. Only a handful turned up. It was a mystery to him, Tenet wrote, why the 9/11 Commission Report failed to mention the July 10 meeting with Rice—he had told the commissioners about the encounter in closed testimony. It was established that Tenet had indeed told the Commission of the meeting. As others have noted, the Commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, was closer to Rice and other Bush appointees than was healthy for a man heading a supposedly even-handed investigation—he had even coauthored a book with Rice. According to 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, Tenet thought Rice “understood the level of urgency he was communicating.”

“It is shocking,” Peter Rundlet, a former Commission counsel, has written, “that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know. Many, many questions need to be asked and answered about this revelation” (meeting: Woodward,

State of Denial

, 50–, Tenet, 151–; congressional report: Report, “Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today,” Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 111th Cong., 1st Sess.,

U.S. Govt. Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 11/30/09, 4; indeed given:

WP

, 10/3/06; Zelikow: e.g., Shenon, 40–, 65–, 106–, Woodward,

State of Denial

, 52; understood: McClatchy Newspapers, 10/2/06; Rundlet: Peter Rundlet, “Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting from 9/11 Commission,”

http://thinkprogress.org

).

76 Black/Scheuer/UBL unit head resignations: MFR 03009296, 9/3/03, Shenon, 395, CR, 259–;

77 “The purpose”/Williams concerns/​Zubaydah/​connected/​Hanjour/​Williams recommended: Phoenix, Squad 16 to Counterterrorism, 7/10/01, www.justice.gov, FBI IG, Statement of Eleanor Hill re “The FBI’s Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to Sept. 11, 2001,” 9/24/02 [as updated 10/17/02]. The suspicious activity on the America West flight, which may have been reconnaissance for the 9/11 operation, is described in Ch. 24;

78 minimal circulation: NYT, 6/10/05, Amy B. Zegart, Spying Blind, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, 261n55;

79 “racial profiling”: Report, JI, 5;

80 “exercise”: NLETS Message (All Regions), from Counterterrorism, 7/2/01, INTELWIRE;

81 “I had asked”: Richard Clarke, 236–.

82 “I don’t want”: The Justice Department told the Commission that Ashcroft, his former deputy, and his chief of staff denied that he had made such a comment to Pickard. Ashcroft himself also denied it in his April 2004 Commission testimony. Pickard, for his part, reiterated his allegation in testimony, in Commission interviews, in a letter to the commission—and in a later long interview with reporter Philip Shenon. The commission was unable to resolve the contradictory accounts. It found, though, that—whatever the truth about the Ashcroft/Pickard relationship, “The domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction, and did not have a plan” (Justice Dept./Ashcroft denials: Hearing transcript & Testimony of Ashcroft, 4/13/04, CO; Pickard: CR, 265, 536n52, Shenon, 246, 432n, Ch. 35).

83 “Fishing rod”/“Frankly”: CBS News, 7/26/01. Ashcroft and senior FBI officials had received recent briefings on the increased terrorist threat level. It is conceivable, however, that the decision that Ashcroft not fly commercial was taken because of threats of a different nature. From early on, reportedly, there had been threats to Ashcroft’s personal safety—sparked by his opposition to abortion and gun control (briefings: CR, 258, MFR 04019823, 6/3/04, e.g. Briefing Material, Weekly with Attorney General, 7/12/01, “Ashcroft,” B1, Dan Marcus files, CF; threats: Shenon, 243–).

84 G8 summit: CR, 258, Shenon, 243–;

85 slept ships/Pope/airspace: BBC News, 6/21/01, CNN, 7/17/01, WP, 1/19/02, NYT, 9/26/01.

86 Mubarak: Benjamin & Simon, 342, Daily Record (Glasgow), 9/27/01. Warnings of a possible bin Laden attack at Genoa, specifically targeting Bush, also reportedly came from German and Russian intelligence. There were also concerns that violent protest might disturb public order during the summit (BBC News, 6/27/01, CNN, 7/17/01).

CHAPTER 27

1

Dubai/passport copied:

New Yorker

, 7/10/06, Wright, 311, Report, JI, 144, but see Bamford,

Shadow Factory

, 18–.

2

CIA had not placed:

In spite of the discovery of an internal CIA cable alleging that the visa information had been shared with the FBI, complex investigation did nothing to substantiate the assertion. Other documents, the 9/11 Commission reported, “contradict” the claim that the visa information was shared with the Bureau. The Commission flatly states that “no one alerted the INS or the FBI” to look for Mihdhar or his traveling companion, Nawaf al-Hazmi (CR, 502n44, 354, & see Tenet, 195).

3

Mihdhar/visas/July 4:

Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, 33–, 37;

4

two groups/NJ/Fort Lauderdale:

CR, 230, 240, 248, 253,

WP

, 9/30/01, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

5

Mihdhar/crammed:

ibid., CR, 240–, McDermott,

221;

6

Hazmi bride:

CR, 222,

marriage obligatory:

Fouda & Fielding, 81, & see, e.g., “The Importance of Marriage in Islam,”

www.sunniforum.com

.

7

Atta:

Chicago Tribune

, 9/11/04,

Newsweek

, 10/1/01, Bernstein, 105, MFR 04017500, 12/4/03. In a 2004 book, author Daniel Hopsicker gave an account of a supposed relationship, covering periods in 2000 and 2001, between Atta and a young woman named Amanda Keller. Widely circulated on the Internet, the account presents a picture of a deeply unpleasant character who—were the account to prove accurate—frequented sleazy nightspots, beat his girlfriend, and—in one savage incident—killed and dismembered one of her cats and an entire litter of kittens. After lengthy analysis of a tangled scenario, however, the authors concluded that this has been a matter of mistaken identity. A young woman who—according to the Hopsicker account—accompanied Atta and Keller on a trip to the Florida Keys did not recognize pictures of the authentic Atta as the “Mohamed” who made the trip. Keller’s mother and sister are reported as having said that her Mohamed was “tall,” “lanky,” while Atta was only five foot seven. She said early on her boyfriend was French Canadian, and that he told her he had fathered a child in France. That could of course have been a lie—except for another element. According to Keller, the name her Mohamed used at one point to sign a document was “Mohamed Arajaki”—and an official list of men of interest to law enforcement after 9/11 includes a reference to an “Arakj, Mohamad” with a French address.

In the transcript of a long interview with Hopsicker, Keller refers to her sometime boyfriend only as Mohamed, not as Atta or as definitely having been Atta. Press reports of interviews with Keller, moreover, have twice thrown doubt on the notion that her boyfriend was future hijacker Atta. Phone checks, said a counterterrorism agent cited in the second report—in 2006—indicated that the real Atta and Keller never called each other. Keller herself was quoted in that report as saying her Mohamed had been “another flight student not connected to 9/11.” If she had given the impression that he was the real Atta, she reportedly said, that had been “my bad for lying.… I really didn’t think about it until after I did it.” The authors did not succeed in reaching Keller for interview. (Hopsicker account: Hopsicker, refs., Keller videotape seen by authors, transcript provided by Hopsicker; trip to Keys: ints. & corr. Linda Lopez; “tall”/“lanky”:

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

, 9/24/01; 5’7”: Temporary Airman Certificate, “Airman Records,” B45, T5, CF; “Arajaki”: Hopsicker, 76; list: AP, 10/12/01, list inadvertently released first in Finland, later in Italy, in authors’ collection; press reports:

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

, 9/23/01, 9/10/06; in addition, relevant authors’ interviews included Elaine Emrich, Stephanie Frederickson, Vicky Keyser, Earle Kimel, Tony & Vonnie LaConca, and Neil Patton).

8

injections:

NYT

, 4/25/11;

9

KSM stipend:

CR, 518n40.

10 muslimmarriage.com: MFR of int. [name redacted], 2/23/04, CF. Two of the hijack pilots had married or gone through a form of marriage. As early as 1999, Jarrah and his girlfriend, Aysel, took part in a wedding ceremony at a Hamburg mosque, and—though she would later say she did not consider it binding (the marriage was not registered with the state)—Aysel referred to herself in a letter as Jarrah’s “yearning wife.” Under pressure from his family, Shehhi had married during a trip back to the United Arab Emirates in early 2000—only to decline to go through with the relationship afterward. Mohamed Atta’s father, meanwhile, was to say he found his son a prospective wife who was “nice and delicate, the daughter of a former ambassador.” By one account, Atta agreed to get engaged to the woman in 1999—but any prospect of the union becoming a reality vanished with his extended stay in Germany and growing commitment to jihad. One account holds that Atta spoke of marrying a Turk rather than an Egyptian, because he thought Turkish women “more obedient.” Binalshibh, for his part, picked up a young woman—believed to have been a Japanese Roman Catholic!—in 2000, and proposed within twenty-four hours. She would have to dress and behave in the way required of a Muslim wife, he told her, and that their children would have to be brought up to hate Jews. Though they never met again after the initial five-day interlude, Binalshibh later wrote her emails signed: “Your King, Ramzi.” Records, meanwhile, indicate that two of the muscle hijackers, Banihammad and Omari, were married (Jarrah: McDermott, 78–; Shehhi: ibid., 54, Corbin, 224, Berlin to Counterterrorism, 12/5/03, FBI 315N-WF-227135, INTELWIRE; Atta: Newsweek, 10/1/01, Bernstein, 105, MFR 04017500, 12/4/03, CF; Binalshibh: McDermott, 199–; Banihammad: Riyadh to Counterterrorism, 10/15/01, FBI 265A-NY-280350, Misc. Request 54, “Aliases and Ids,” B62, T5, CF; Omari: Visa Application, 6/8/01, www.oldnationalreview.com).

11 fishing: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

12 Wacko’s: ibid., “Exclusive: 9/11 Hijacker Stayed at Jacksonville Hotel,” www.firstcoastnews.com.

13 lap dancing/movies/sex toys: “Agents of Terror Leave Mark on Sin City,” 10/4/01, www.sfgate.com, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, FBI report, “The 11 September Hijacker Cell Model,” 2/03, released under FOIA to INTELWIRE. Shehhi’s reported visit to a lap dancing club occurred during a trip to Las Vegas, reported later in this chapter. Earlier, in California in 2000, Hazmi and Mihdhar had also reportedly visited strip clubs. The hijacker who visited the Adult Lingerie Center was Majed Moqed (Shehhi: San Francisco Chronicle, 10/4/01; Hazmi/Mihdhar: LAT, 9/11/02, Newsweek, 6/10/02, 10/15/01; Moqed: Newsday, 9/23/01, Newsweek, 10/15/01, WP, 9/30/01, summary re Majed Moqed, JICI, 4/19/02, FBI03135, www.scribd.com).

14 Jarrah to Germany: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

15 Rodriguez/“very humble”: Jeffrey Steinberg, “Cheney’s ‘Spoon-Benders’ Pushing Nuclear Armegeddon,” 8/26/05, Executive Intelligence Review, eds. Der Spiegel, 104–;

16 fitness classes: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, “Hijackers’ True Name Usage,” U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit 0G0013;

17 knives: “Hijacker Knife Purchases,” B18, T7, CF;

18 Hortman: MFR 04018712, 4/27/04, & MFR 04018407, 4/12/04, CF, Staff Statement 16, CO;

19 Hanjour Hudson/practice flight DC: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Staff Statement 16, CO.

20 familiarize routine/Vegas, etc.: “Hijackers’ True Name Usage,” U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit 0G0013, Report, JI, 139, MFR, 04016230 [Las Vegas Investigative Summary, undated], MFR 04018564, 1/5/04, MFR 04016240, 1/5/04, & MFR 04016244, 1/5/04, CF. Jarrah was accompanied in Las Vegas by an older fellow Arab. The unidentified Arab resembled the “uncle” who had accompanied him days earlier when he rented a small plane at a Philadelphia airport (MFR 04016240, 1/5/04, MFR 04016239, 1/5/04, CF).

21 74 times: McDermott, 222, MFR 04019351, 12/10–11/03, CF;

22 knives: MFR 04019351, 12/10–11/03, CF.

23 needed talk/rendezvous Europe/Spain: CR, 243–, 530n145. The Commission Report suggests that the pair talked at a hotel not far from Cambrils, near Barcelona, and that Atta rented accommodations in the area until July 19. The experienced author Edward Epstein, who had interviewed prominent Spanish investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzón, wrote in a 2007 article that Atta and Binalshibh “dropped from sight leaving no hotel records, cellphone logs or credit-card receipts” from July 9 to July 16. Judge Garzón reasoned that they spent that time at a prearranged safe house organized by a Spanish-based Algerian accomplice and al Qaeda activists in Spain. Phone intercepts showed that Binalshibh was in touch with the Algerian a few weeks later. Other intercepts indicated that the Germany-based Syrian suspect Marmoun Darkazanli (see Ch. 24) was in Spain at approximately the same time. Binalshibh would claim under interrogation that he met no one but Atta in Spain (Cambrils: CR, 244, 530n145; “dropped”/Algerian accomplice: Edward J. Epstein, “The Spanish Connection,” 2/22/07, www.opinionjournal.com, LAT, 1/14/03, CNN, 10/31/01; Darkazanli: LAT, 1/14/03; Binalshibh: CR, 244).

24 OBL wanted/​security/​“symbols”/​“preferred”: Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” CO, 207, 244;

25 WH too tough/streets: CR, 244;

26 “in the hands”: KSM SUBST;

27 necklaces/phones: CR, 245.

28 Atta admitted: Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” CO, 38. If the identifications made by witnesses at the Pelican Alley restaurant in Venice, Florida, are accurate, then Atta and Shehhi may have been back in Venice in late July—with a dark-complexioned companion—engaged in what appeared to be a heated argument (ints. Tom & Renee Adorna, Jeff Pritko).

29 drop out?/called Aysel/​ticket/​“emotional”: CR, 246–, Staff Statement 16, CO, MFR 04019350, 3/18/04, CR, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE.

30 Binalshibh told KSM: How we come to know about this exchange, which was conducted on the phone, will be discussed in Ch. 30. If meant literally, the reference to cost in the conversation is odd (and perhaps merely code) unless, as the Commission was to surmise, KSM was referring to the cost and trouble of organizing a replacement hijacking pilot. The notional replacement, the commission thought, was likely Zacarias Moussaoui, the French-born terrorist who had been sent to the United States for pilot training early in 2001. During his conversation with Binalshibh, KSM authorized the sending of “skirts” to “Sally,” an instruction believed to mean that Binalshibh was to send Moussaoui $14,000. Binalshibh did so in early August. According to KSM, however, he at no stage contemplated using Moussaoui as a pilot on the 9/11 operation, but rather in a later “second wave” of attacks. As will emerge later in this chapter, Moussaoui would be detained in August because of his suspect behavior at a flight school in Minnesota (CR, 246–, Indictment, 12/01 & Superceding Indictment, 7/02, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Staff Statement 16, CO).

31 “We spent”: Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection;

32 apartment: Jarrah timeline, “03009470, Packet 6, Ziad Jarrah chronology,” www.scribd.com;

33 “This House”: Newsweek, 9/24/01;

34 “big planes”: int. Rosmarie Canel by Hannah Cleaver;

35 GPS: Jarrah timeline;

36 Atta/Hazmi stopped by police: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Mohamed Mohamed Elamir Awad Elsayed Atta, Enforcement Operations Division, Texas Service Center, Intelligence Division, INS, “Hijacker Primary Documents—AA11,” B51, T5, CF, & see Graham with Nussbaum, 36–;

37 “Every cop”: MFR of George Tenet, 12/23/03, CF;

38 “five or six weeks”: Staff Statement 16, CO, CR, 243;

39 “Salaam”: McDermott, 225.

40 warnings: Chicago attorney David Schippers said soon after 9/11 that he had received information on a coming terror attack on Manhattan and that—“a month before the bombing”—he had tried to get a warning to Attorney General Ashcroft. He said he was never able to reach Ashcroft and was brushed off by Justice Department officials. Schippers’s sources, he said, included FBI agents and policemen. In the summer of 2001, Schippers was attorney for Chicago FBI counterterrorism agent Robert Wright, whose book—a “blueprint on how the events of September 11 were inevitable”—was to be suppressed by the FBI. Schippers had also become a vocal advocate for Jayna Davis, an Oklahoma journalist whose research on the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building posits a Middle East connection to that attack (see Ch. 22). The warnings Schippers said he attempted to pass on were not just of a coming attack on New York City but also covered Davis’s research and information on the infiltration of the United States by the Palestinian group Hamas. The totality of his information, Schippers later concluded, was to lead people to think he was “crazy.” Schippers had earlier served as chief investigative counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment probe of President Clinton (int. David Schippers, The Alex Jones Show, 10/10/01, www.infowars.com, Indianapolis Star, 5/18/02, Chicago magazine, 10/02, Jayna Davis, The Third Terrorist, Nashville: WND, 2004, Foreword).

41 DGSE: “Motley Submissions—French Intelligence Passed to the U.S.—Moussaoui—Planes as Weapons Widely Known,” B10, T2, CF, “Oussama Bin Laden,” leaked DGSE report, 9/13/01, seen by authors.

42 Russian FSB; AFP, 9/16/01’;

43 “20 al Qaeda”: 60 Minutes II: The Plot, CBS, 10/9/02.

44 Muttawakil: Muttawakil’s information was given him, according to the emissary, by the head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yildash. The detail is relevant, for the earliest French intelligence information on bin Laden’s hijacking plans came from Uzbek contacts (see pp. 308–9). Following the U.S. rout of the Taliban regime that he had predicted, former Taliban minister Muttawakil surrendered in early 2002, was for some time held in American custody, then freed. His emissary, who told his story on condition of anonymity, stayed on in Kabul—apparently at liberty. U.S. diplomat David Katz declined to discuss the episode when contacted in 2002. The story was reported by the BBC and the British newspaper The Independent, based on an interview of the emissary by the journalist Kate Clark (BBC News, The Independent [U.K.], 9/7/02).

45 plans postponed: CR, 259, 534n28;

46 “will still happen”: ibid., 260, 534n32;

47 Miller/“very spun-up”: FBI IG;

48 slow progress/“But the Principals’ ”: Testimony of Richard Clarke, 4/8/04, CO;

49 Bush vacation/“I’m sure”: ABC News, 8/3/01, AP, 8/6/01, USA Today, 8/3/01;

50 Cheney: Jackson Hole News & Guide (Wyoming), 8/15/01;

51 poll/“too much”: USA Today, 8/6/01, “Public Critical of Bush’s Vacation Plans,” 8/7/01, www.gallup.com, WP, 8/7/01. As things turned out, the president was to return to Washington a few days earlier than planned, on August 30 (Public Papers of the Presidents, George W. Bush, 2001, www.gpoaccess.gov, 1569);

52 CBS re PDB/“bin Laden’s”: “What Bush Knew Before September 11,” 5/17/02, www.cbsnews.com;

53 Fleischer/“very generalized”: press briefing, 5/16/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.gov;

54 Fleischer follow-up: press briefing, 5/17/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.gov;

55 Rice/“not a warning”/“an analytic”/“hijacking”/“could have”: press briefing, 5/16/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov;

56 “historical”: ibid., Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO;

57 struggle: e.g. Report, JI, 1, Kean & Hamilton, 89–;

58 “the most highly”: press briefing by Ari Fleischer, 5/21/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.gov;

59 CIA refused: Report, JI, 1;

60 several released: Thomas Blanton, “The President’s Daily Brief,” National Security Archive, 4/12/04, www.gwu.edu;

61 leather binder: Tenet, 31;

62 “top-secret”: Graham, with Nussbaum, 80;

63 “news digest”: Blanton, “The President’s Daily Brief”;

64 truly secret/dull: ibid., Shenon, 220;

65 Joint Inquiry pressed: Report, JI, 1;

66 Commission/“What did”: Kean & Hamilton, 89–, Zelikow to Kean & Hamilton, Proposal for Breaking PDB Impasse, 9/25/03, “Letters & Memos, Negotiations over Access to PDBs,” B6, Dan Marcus files, CF;

67 “blowtorch”: Ben-Veniste, 239;

68 heading had not read: The Washington Post had reported the correct headline as early as May 19, 2002, two days after Fleischer misstated it. The significance of the press secretary’s omission of the word “in,” however, got lost in the fog of the subsequent White House effort to minimize the PDB’s overall importance (“Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer,” 5/17/02, www.gwu.edu, WP, 5/19/02, Nation, 4/12/04).

69 Aug. 6 PDB: released 4/10/04, “Withdrawal Notice re 4–12–04 memo re Aug. 6 PDB, Withdrawal Notice re 5–16–01 Daily UBL Threat,” B6, Dan Marcus files, CF. The PDB also referred to the fact that, as indicated by the attacks on the American embassies in Africa in 1998, bin Laden prepared operations “years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks.” The PDB also stated that the FBI was currently “conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S.” that it considered bin Laden–related. This last assertion turned out to be a CIA misunderstanding of a liaison call to the FBI. Some seventy individuals were apparently being investigated by the FBI (Testimony of Thomas Pickard, 4/13/04, CO, Zegart, 109).

70 redacted: Fact Sheet on Aug. 6, 2001, PDB, Office of the Press Secretary, 4/10/04, www.gwu.gov;

71 “said nothing”/at own request: remarks by the President to the Travel Pool [Fort Hood, TX], 4/11/04, www.whitehouse.gov;

72 Bush/Commission meeting/Ben-Veniste account: Ben-Veniste, 293– & see Shenon, 291–, 340–, CR, 260–, Kean & Hamilton, 206–;

73 Clarke “in writing”: see CR, 255, 263, 535n5;

74 “I really don’t”: Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO.

75 nobody could have foreseen: Rice acknowledged in her 2004 Commission testimony that she had misspoken in her comment to the press in 2002 that “no one” could have predicted hijackers using planes as missiles. Given the Genoa situation, she said—and given that others had indeed foreseen the possibility—Rice said she ought to have said only that she could not have imagined an attack using planes in that way. By contrast, Louis Freeh—FBI director until June 2001—told the Commission that the possible use of planes in suicide missions had in his experience been part of the planning for potential terrorist events (misspoken/she could not: Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO, Ben-Veniste, 251, Press Briefing by Condoleezza Rice, 5/16/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov; Freeh: Testimony of Louis Freeh, 4/13/04, CO).

76 follow up/discussed with Ashcroft?: The job of making contact with domestic agencies, Bush told Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, was not Rice’s but that of White House chief of staff Andy Card. This assertion was impossible to check because the commission was bound by yet another condition, not to raise questions arising from the Rice or Bush-Cheney interviews with other White House officials. (Ben-Veniste, 303).

77 Rice in Texas?: A contemporary Washington Post report of the President’s activity on August 6 stated that he “held a 45-minute meeting with four senior officials here and talked by telephone with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice about Macedonia.” (authors’ italics) (WP, 8/7/01, USA Today, 8/6/01, 10:24 P.M. update);

78 doubt/“asked for it”: Ben-Veniste, 300, remarks by the President to the Travel Pool, [Fort Hood, TX], 4/11/04, www.whitehouse.gov;

79 “All right”: Suskind, One Percent Doctrine, 1–, Ben-Veniste, 300, additional information gathered by authors, not for attribution;

80 “no formal”: Tenet to Kean & Hamilton, 3/26/04, “PDB—letter from Tenet re Aug. 6 PDB,” B6, Dan Marcus files, CF;

81 “none”: Ben-Veniste, 391.

82 “current”/“pay more”: Shenon, 379, 437n. This account of the August 6 PDB episode is intended by the authors to be not an assessment of the document’s quality but a summary of its content—in the context of the way President Bush, National Security Adviser Rice, and press secretary Fleischer described its contents. Author Amy Zegart severely criticized the quality of the PDB in her book Spying Blind, on the CIA and the FBI and their role prior to 9/11. She judged it a “tragically shoddy piece of intelligence.” Former CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black, however, characterized it as a “place-marker” or “reminder” that bin Laden’s ultimate objective was “to strike hard against the United States” (Zegart, 108, Testimony of Cofer Black, 4/13/04, CO).

83 “had written”: Ben-Veniste, 301–.

84 manager alerted/​Moussaoui/​“goal”/​“I am sure”/$6,800: Stipulation, 3/1/06, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, 3/1/06;

85 “joy ride”: “Moussaoui, Zacarias, IT—Other,” 8/19/01, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit 692;

86 string of questions/​detained/​“martyrs”/​“unambiguous”/​“convinced”/: CR, 273–, FBI IG, MFR 04019350, 3/18/04, CF, Report, JI, 22–;

87 KSM would tell/​“problematic personality”: KSM SUBST, CR, 247, 531n162;

88 met Binalshibh/​$14,000/​telephone number: Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” CO, MFR, 04019350, 3/18/04, Indictment & Exhibits MN00601, MN00601.1, MN00601.2, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, CR, 225, 520n54.

89 agents knew nothing: Had agents been cleared to examine Moussaoui’s possessions, they would have discovered letters purporting to show that Moussaoui was acting as consultant in the States for a company called “InFocus Tech.” The signature on the letters was that of Yazid Sufaat, the owner of the Kuala Lumpur condominium in which the terrorist meeting—attended by Mihdhar and Hazmi—had been held in January 2000. The FBI had been aware of that meeting at the time, so—had the Bureau’s system been adequately coordinated—discovery of the letters in timely fashion would immediately have linked Moussaoui to al Qaeda. (Report, JI, 26, Exhibit OK01043, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui).

90 appeals/70 messages: Statement of Eleanor Hill re “The FBI’s Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to Sept. 11, 2001,” 9/24/02 [as updated 10/17/02], JI, USA Today, 3/2/06, Newsday, 3/21/06, LAT, 3/21/06;

91 “spun up”/“take control”: FBI IG.

92 “That’s not”: Statement of Eleanor Hill. The headquarters failure to respond positively on Moussaoui was to lead to protracted outrage and regret. The wrangle had centered on the complex matter of how legally to get access to Moussaoui’s possessions. The options available were either a criminal search warrant or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) warrant—permitted, in this context, if it can be shown that the subject is an agent of an international terrorist group and is engaged in terrorism on behalf of that group. The case agent in Minneapolis, concerned that there was insufficient probable cause for a criminal warrant, favored the FISA option—only to be confronted by legalistic hurdles thrown up by headquarters. The go-ahead was given only on September 11, after the two strikes on the World Trade Center. Evidence and detainee statements were eventually to link Moussaoui to KSM and Binalshibh, and he is now serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit acts of terror and air piracy. As of this writing, the only other person convicted—of being an accessory to the murder of the people aboard the planes on 9/11—is Mounir Motassadeq, who is serving fifteen years in Germany. Motassadeq, an associate of the Hamburg-based hijackers, was accused of helping the hijackers prepare for the 9/11 operation. In a lengthy prison interview, Motassadeq told the authors that—while he had certainly been an associate and friend of the future hijackers in Hamburg—he had had no knowledge whatsoever of what they were plotting. The authors came away from the interview doubting that he was guilty as charged (warrant options: e.g., Graham with Nussbaum, 51; go-ahead: FBI IG; evidence/sentence: Indictment, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, 12/01, AP, 5/4/06, CNN, 4/23/05; Motassadeq: NYT, 1/9/07, Der Spiegel, 1/12/07, Economist, 9/3/02, CBS News, 10/22/02, ints. Motassadeq, Udo Jacob, 2009).

93 second development/New information/Wilshire reconsidered/​“Something bad”: CR, 266–,FBI IG. In the 9/11 Commission Report, and in a 2004 review of the FBI’s handling of pre-9/11 intelligence information issued by the Justice Department’s inspector general, relevant CIA and FBI personnel are referred to by pseudonyms. True names of many of the individuals were revealed in evidence prepared in 2006 for Moussaoui’s trial. Others have been asserted by independent writers, notably Lawrence Wright and Kevin Fenton, and the authors have used these identifications in the text. The CIA officer named here as Tom Wilshire is “John” in the official reports. The FBI analyst Margarette Gillespie is “Mary” in reports, while the FBI analyst Dina Corsi appears to be identical with “Jane” in the Commission Report and with “Donna” in the inspector general’s review. Steve Bongardt is “Steve B.” in the Commission Report and “Scott” in the review. Robert Fuller is “Robert F.” in the Commission Report and “Richard” in the review (CR 267–, & 537n63 et seq., FBI IG, McNulty to Troccoli 3/1/06, U.S. v Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit 952.B, Wright, 311, 340–, 352–, 425n, Kevin Fenton, “Aliases of 9/11 Figures Revealed,” 7/15/08, http://hcgroups.wordpress.com).

94 Wilshire suggested to Gillespie: Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower reads as if it was not Wilshire but CIA supervisor Clark Shannon who assigned Gillespie to this task. Wright’s New Yorker articles, however, also in 2006, say Wilshire assigned the work. So do other relevant sources (Wright, 340–. CR, 269–, New Yorker, 7/10/06, Substitution for the Testimony of “Mary,” U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit 940);

95 “It all clicked”/“watchlist”: CR, 266–, FBI IG;

96 not in U.S./FAA not informed: Report, JI, 15, Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” CO, 42, Staff Statement 2, CO;

97 Corsi sent email/red tape/misinterpretation: FBI IG;

98 “Disneyland”: Wright, 353–;

99 “Someday”/Fuller: FBI IG;

100 “assigned no”: CR, 538n77.

101 Tenet fishing: Breitweiser, 193;

102 Tenet directed: Tenet, 159;

103 Tenet briefed/Aug. 23: ibid., CR, 275;

104 seriously/“If this guy”: Tenet, 202–;

105 “brow furrowed”/“no one ever”: Ben-Veniste, 301;

106 “I didn’t see”/lied: Testimony of George Tenet, 4/14/04, CO, Shenon, 361–.

107 Harlow re Aug. 17 & 31: Salt Lake Tribune, WP, 4/15/04. Probably because of an informal exchange Bush had with reporters the following day, it has been suggested that Tenet also met with the President on August 24. The wording of one of his answers could be taken to indicate to the press that there had been a Tenet visit on the 24th. The sense Bush intended, however, is not entirely clear and could equally refer to the visit of August 17 (exchange: Public Papers of the Presidents, George W. Bush, 2001, www.gpoaccess.gov, 1037; suggested: e.g. Robert Schopmeyer, Prior Knowledge of 9/11, Palo Alto, CA: Palo Alto Publishing, 2007, 512, corr. Robert Schopmeyer, 2011).

108 “to make sure”: Tenet, 159;

109 “not recall”: CR, 262.

110 “The question”: Newsweek, 5/25/02;

111 “I do not believe”: Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO;

112 “an appalling”: Vanity Fair, 2/09;

113 “There was no”: Ben-Veniste, 307– & see 265.

CHAPTER 28

1

Hello Jenny:

With a few minor changes to ensure verbatim translation from the German, the “Dear Jenny” message is as reported by Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda, drawing on his encounter with Binalshibh in Karachi in 2002 (see pp. 243–45). Binalshibh dated the message as having been sent on or about August 21, 2001. According to Fouda, Binalshibh produced the message “on a floppy disk” and showed it to him “on screen.” The 9/11 Commission Report does not reproduce the “Dear Jenny” message, but refers to coded August “communications” between Atta and Binalshibh that were recovered when KSM was captured. These messages included a discussion of targets dated as having occurred on August 3. In a related note, the Commission quotes Binalshibh as claiming that the words “law” and “politics” were both used to refer only to the Capitol—though the reference was surely in fact to two separate targets (Fouda & Fielding, 138–,

The Australian

, 9/9/02,

Sunday Times

[London], 9/802, CR 248–, 531n 165/166).

2

August 29 call/Atta riddle:

Reporter Fouda, who learned of the puzzle in 2002 from Binalshibh, rendered it as reproduced in the text. The Commission Report referred to it as “two branches, a slash, and a lollipop.” A factor in choosing the date September 11, according to a note found on KSM’s computer following his capture, was that the U.S. Congress would be in session in the Capitol by that time (Fouda & Fielding, 140, CR, 249, Staff Statement 16, CO).

3

Binalshibh passed on:

The Commission Report, drawing on reports of the interrogations of KSM and Binalshibh, states that KSM was informed of the date by Zacaria Essabar, an associate Binalshibh used to carry the message from Germany to KSM in Pakistan. KSM said Essabar brought him the date in a letter, while Binalshibh has said he entrusted Essabar only with a verbal message. Binalshibh has also claimed that he called KSM on the subject. The fact that information was extracted from the prisoners under torture may account for the seeming contradictions. As of this writing, Essabar’s whereabouts are unknown (CR249, 531n173, KSM SUBST, Wanted Notice, Bundeskriminalamt Wiesbaden, 2008).

4

inspector doubts/Kahtani/“He started”:

MFR 04016447, 11/12/03, CF, CR, 12, 248, 564n33;

5

“round out”:

KSM SUBST;

6

“like a soldier”:

MFR 04016447, 11/12/02, CF.

7

340

five rather than four:

Kahtani, who was captured in Afghanistan after 9/11, was one of the prisoners “tortured”—in the words of the retired judge appointed to decide on prosecutions at Guantánamo. The record indicates that he strongly resisted interrogation. He remains a Guantánamo detainee as of this writing. Commission staff identified nine other recruits who were at some point considered for assignment to the 9/11 operation (captured/“tortured”:

WP

, 1/14/09; resisted: Interrogation Log, Detainee 063,

www.ccrjustice.org

, “The Guantánamo Docket,”

NYT

website, as of 1/12/11; nine other: Staff Statement 16, CO, CR, 235).

8

Atta at airport:

Staff Statement 16, CO, Mohammed al-Kahtani, “RFBI 03013592, Documents Relating to PENTTBOM Briefing of Dec. 10, 2003, Packet 2, CF;

9

Atta free/rental cars/flying/hijackers everyday activities:

“Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

10 moved out Paterson/flight manuals: MFR 04016237, 11/6/03, CF, NYT, 10/28/01;

11 Valencia/“thought they were gay”: Die Zeit (Germany), 10/2/02;

12 men tugging/retrieve towel: St. Petersburg Times, 9/1/02. Simpson believed the men who tried her door were Ahmad al-Haznawi and Ahmed al-Nami;

13 Surma: ibid.;

14 Warrick: ibid., Observer [U.K.], 9/16/01, int. Brad Warrick.

15 Longshore/Dragomir: WP, 10/5/01, Chicago Tribune, 9/18/01. Though this incident was reported in major newspapers, it is not certain that the men Dragomir remembered were Jarrah and a companion—or indeed that the companion was Atta, as the manager thought he might have been. The date of the incident is also not entirely clear—it was reported both as having occurred on August 30 and in “late August.” That said, Jarrah was in the area on August 30, having just returned from Baltimore. He moved out of the accommodations he had been renting for some time on August 31, took another condominium close by—and was apparently using the Internet at a Kinko’s in Hollywood—where the reported Longshore Motel incident occurred—on September 3, at a time Atta was also there (“Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Profile, Ziad Samir Jarrah, ACS Download Documents, Pkt. 6, 03009470, CF).

16 Hazmi phoned: CR, 223, 249;

17 Abdullah had known/helped: CR, 216, 220, 516n20, Los Angeles to Counterterrorism, 1/8/02, FBI 302 re canvas of hotels, 1/15/02, & FBI 302 re int. instructors Sorbi Flight School, 4/11/02 INTELWIRE, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5/26/04, LAT, 7/24/04, MSNBC, 9/8/06;

18 activist/another man/“planes falling”: San Diego to Ottawa, 4/11/02, San Diego, Squad 15, to San Diego, 2/4/03, INTELWIRE, CR, 218–.

19 “acting”/“nervous”: MFR 04017535, 11/18/03, MFR 04017543, 11/18/03, CF. In detention after 9/11, first as a material witness and then on immigration charges, Abdullah would refuse a 9/11 Commission request to interview him. While in prison, it was alleged, he told other inmates that he had known that Hazmi and Mihdhar were involved in plans for a terrorist attack. According to one inmate, he said he had known the plan was for a 9/11-style attack and that he “found out” three weeks before the attacks occurred. Abdullah, who had arrived in the United States via Canada using a Yemeni passport identifying him as “al Mihdhar Zaid” but then changed his name, was charged with an immigration offense and deported in 2003. 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow has described the report’s findings on Abdullah as “ominous.” In a 2004 interview with The Washington Post, however, Abdullah denied having had any foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Reports suggest the possibility that the hijacking references in the notebook found among his possessions may have been written by someone else (refuse: CR, 517n31; involved: ibid., 218–; “Zaid”: “Inside I.C.E. [Immigration and Customs Enforcement],” Dept. of Homeland Security, Vol. 4, 5/25–6/7/04, www.ice.gov; “ominous”: Zelikow to Shenon, 2/12/07, www.philipshenon.com; denied: WP, 8/10/04; notebook: ibid., 516n21, 218).

20 obtained IDs: Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” 39, FBI 302 of int. Victor Lopez-Flores, 9/23/01, 9/25/01, 10/06/01, 11/8/01, 11/13/01, “Lopez-Flores,” B11, T5, CF, Graham, with Nussbaum, 76;

21 airline reservations/tickets: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

22 frequent flier: ibid., Staff Report, “Monograph on the Four Flights & Civil Aviation Security,” CF, MH, 9/18/01;

23 changed assignments: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

24 Muslim meals: Time, 9/24/01;

25 beyond destinations: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

26 transcontinental/​fuel/​explosive: ibid., eds. Der Spiegel, 32.

27 Atta thought: CR, 531n171. As things were to turn out, and as noted in Ch. 2 on p. 20, many Trade Center workers did not reach their place of work before the attacks began. They were delayed by voting in local elections and traffic jams.

28 shopped knives/Stanley two-piece/​Leatherman/​Dollar House/folding knife: Staff Report, “Monograph on the Four Flights & Civil Aviation Security,” CF, “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, witness list, “Hijacker Knife Purchases,” B18, T7, CF. The folding knife would be found later in Atta’s shipped baggage, which failed to make the transfer to American 11, the plane he hijacked on 9/11 (witness list, “Hijacker Knife Purchases,” B18, T7, CF).

29 Principals convened/draft NSPD: CR, 213–, Farmer, 65–, Richard Clarke, 26;

30 State had told: WP, 1/20/02;

31 debate re Predator/dueled: ibid., Benjamin & Simon, 345–, CR, 214, Tenet, 160, corr. Miles Kara;

32 “I just couldn’t”: Vanity Fair, 2/09;

33 reconnaissance: CR, 214;

34 “I didn’t really”: Testimony of Richard Clarke, 3/24/04, CO;

35 “grasp the enormity”: MFR 04018415, 12/16/03, CF;

36 “It sounds”: New Yorker, 8/4/03;

37 strongly worded note: Staff Statement 8, CO, CR 212–, 343–, 513n247–;

38 Directive approved: CR, 213–.

39 money left over/returned: Staff Report, Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” CO, PENTTBOM, Summary of Captioned Investigation,” 11/5/01, authors’ collection, Staff Statement 16, CO, Stipulation, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, 3/1/06. The return of funds notwithstanding, it has been alleged that Atta received $100,000 as late as August 2001. A story emerged in the Indian press soon after 9/11, supposedly citing sources in the FBI and Indian intelligence, claiming that the director of the Pakistani ISI, Lieutenant General Mahmoud Ahmed, ordered the supposed wire transfer of the money in either the summer of 2001 or 2000. The FBI told 9/11 Commission staff that there was no evidence Atta received a payment from the Pakistani ISI. Nor, indeed, were there “any unexplained funds at all.” One would wonder—if such a payment was made in August 2001—why it was required so late in the operation. Given the long-running enmity between Pakistan and India, the allegation may merely have been Indian propaganda. That said, Pakistani intelligence has had a long involvement with the Taliban, and allegedly with bin Laden. The U.S. government, meanwhile, has never determined the original source of any of the money used in the attack, though the mechanics of how it reached the hijackers is known ($100,000: e.g., Times of India, 10/9/01, Press Trust of India, 10/8/01, 10/15/01, WSJ, 10/10/01; ISI/al Qaeda: e.g., AP, 2/21/02, Fox News, 10/8/01, Asia Times, 1/5/02; no evidence: MFR 04019767, CF, Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” CO).

40 “brothers”: Fouda & Fielding, 141;

41 Binalshibh flew/marathon/“The message”: ibid., MFR 04019351, 12/10–11/03, CF, Der Spiegel, 10/27/03, McDermott, 230.

42 “referred”: Sunday Times (London), 10/7/01;

43 “information about”: NYT, 6/4/02;

44 Gary Hart/​“preparedness”/​Rice “said”: Salon, 9/12/01, Columbia Journalism Review, Nov./Dec. 2001, Statement by the President, 5/8/01, http://usgovinfo.about.com, WP, 1/20/02, CR, 204;

45 Bush met Tenet: Salt Lake Tribune, 4/15/04.

46 agent getting started/​“security”/​tentative feelers/ChoicePoint: CR, 270–, FBI IG, Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, Walterville, OR: TrineDay, forthcoming, 345–. Another New York FBI agent, who ran an Internet search on September 11 after the attacks, found Mihdhar’s San Diego address “within hours.” (JI, 43);

47 traffic policeman/Hazmi featured, etc.: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE. The previous occasions Hamzi had come to the notice of the police are reported on p. 324.

48 Shuckums: Time, 9/24/01, Hopsicker, 81–, Newsweek, 9/24/01, St. Petersburg Times, 9/1/02. FBI agents who looked into the Shuckums story evidently thought it occurred on September 6. Atta could not have been there on the 7th, as some press reports had it, as he flew from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore that day (“Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE).

49 Atta/Jarrah sold cars/headed north: ibid., Stipulation, 3/1/06 & Exhibit OG0020.2, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Chronology of Events for Hijackers, Ziad Jarrah chronology, 3/20/02, “03009470 ACS Download Documents, Packet 6,” CF, Staff Statement 16, CO. A story would emerge that Atta and Shehhi were at the Holiday Inn at Longboat Key that day, in west Florida and not far from where President Bush would arrive on the eve of 9/11. The authors interviewed Darlene Sievers and Mark Bean, hotel workers who thought they saw them there, but the record indicates that they were mistaken (Longboat Observer, 11/21/01, ints. Darlene Sievers, Mark Bean).

50 Sweet Temptations: MFR 04020636, 2/2/04, “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

51 “the most”/twice: Boston Herald, 10/10/01, 10/11/01;

52 $100 apiece: BG, 10/10/01, The Independent (U.K.), 10/11/01;

53 porn video: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, WSJ, 10/16/01;

54 paid dancer: NYT, 9/27/01, 10/28/01;

55 Panther Motel/found: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, St. Petersburg Times, 9/1/02;

56 Jarrah ticket: NY Daily News, 1/9/02, Ziad Jarrah chronology, 3/20/02, “03009470 ACS Download Documents, Packet 6,” CF;

57 Jarrah called: Ziad Jarrah chronology, 3/20/02;

58 $2,000: Fisk, The Great War, 1051;

59 sister’s wedding/suit: LAT, 10/23/01.

60 Jarrah package: Stipulation, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, letter reproduced at http://en.wikepedia.org—Arabic & Turkish translated for the authors by Hans Kippenberg & Tilman Seidensticker, “The Fifth Estate: The Story of Ziad Jarrah,” 10/10/01, www.cbc.ca. Jarrah’s mind was evidently on his girlfriend, Aysel, a great deal during his last days alive. He called more than usual, she would remember, four times between the Thursday of the week before 9/11 and the morning of the strikes. He appears to have made the final call when he was already at Newark Airport preparing to board United Flight 93. As fate would have it, according to Sengün, she had to cut the call short because it was a busy moment in the hospital where she was working. There had been nothing out of the ordinary about the call, she would remember—Jarrah had said he loved her. Sengün has not given interviews and it is thought German authorities placed her under some form of witness protection (Sengün sworn statement to police in Germany, 9/15/01, in authors’ collection).

61 told later/she would hope: LAT, 1/27/03.

62 Mihdhar packet: Stipulation, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, 3/1/06, Bamford, Shadow Factory, 81. One FBI document suggests Mihdhar’s letter to his wife was in fact sent not by Mihdhar but by Hazmi. This is clearly in error, not least because—unlike Mihdhar—Hazmi had no wife. As reported earlier, he had been attempting and failing to find himself a wife;

63 Atta had told/called father: CR, 249;

64 KSM to Pakistan: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Charge Sheet,” 4/15/08, www.findlaw.com;

65 told disperse/alert: Bergen, OBL I Know, 307–, Fouda & Fielding, 141;

66 “big plan”/“far”/“My mother”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 279–;

67 Najwa asked/condition/ring: ibid., 281–, 312. The children allowed to leave were two-year-old Nour, a boy, four-year-old Rukhaiya, a girl, and Abdul Rahman, a son born in 1978. In the spring of 2002, the Saudi-owned journal was to publish an interview supposedly given by one of bin Laden’s wives, identified only as “A.S.” Before 9/11, according to her purported interview, bin Laden “came to the house, gave me a telephone, and told me to call my family and tell them we were going somewhere else and that there would be no news of me for a long time.” There is much accompanying detail, including a reference to the interviewee’s “sons.” The authenticity of the interview is dubious. Though the initials match those of Amal al-Sadah, a seventeen-year-old Yemeni bin Laden married in late 2000 or early 2001, she has reportedly borne him only a daughter. She could hardly have given birth to sons by early 2002 (Nour et al.: bin Ladens & Sasson, 282; “A.S.”: BBC, AP, 3/13/02);

68 “soft-spoken”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 8;

69 Najwa prayed: ibid., 282.

Part VI: TWENTY-FOUR HOURS