December 2001

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Main article: 2001

October

Main article: October 2001

November

(November 2001): FAA New York Center Controller Denied Request to Hear Own Tape-Recorded Statement from 9/11

An air traffic controller at the FAA’s New York Center who was recorded recalling her actions during the 9/11 attacks is denied a request to listen to her taped statement, possibly while she is preparing a written statement about the attacks. [US DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, 5/4/2004 ] Six controllers at the New York Center who communicated with, or tracked, two of the hijacked aircraft on 9/11 were recorded later that day giving their personal accounts of what happened (see 11:40 a.m. September 11, 2001). [WASHINGTON POST, 5/6/2004] Mike McCormick, the center’s manager, told the union official representing these controllers that they would be able to use their taped statements to help them prepare written ones (see (Shortly Before 11:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Controller Told No One Can Hear Tape - However, when one of the controllers asks to listen to her own oral statement, she is told by Kevin Delaney—the New York Center’s quality assurance manager, who is the tape’s custodian—that the tape is not meant for anyone to hear. It is unclear if the controller wants to hear the tape to help her prepare a written statement about the attacks. According to a 2004 report by the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (see May 6, 2004), she asks “to listen to the tape in preparing her written statement.” The five controllers that were recorded on September 11 who subsequently provide written statements prepare those statements within three weeks of 9/11 (see (Between September 11 and October 2, 2001)), but, according to Delaney, this controller asks to listen to the tape in November 2001, which would be after the written statements are provided. Controller Requests Tape Again in 2003 - The tape of the controllers’ statements will be destroyed at some point between December 2001 and February 2002 (see Between December 2001 and February 2002), without any of the controllers having listened to it. The controller who requests to hear her own recorded statement will again ask to listen to the tape around September or October 2003, when she is to be interviewed by the 9/11 Commission, but, as it has already been destroyed by then, the tape cannot be located. [US DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, 5/4/2004 ; AIR SAFETY WEEK, 5/17/2004] Entity Tags: Kevin Delaney Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations

November 2001-May 2002: FAA New York Center Submits ‘Formal Accident Package’ for 9/11 Attacks, but Leaves out Tape of Controllers’ Accounts The FAA’s New York Center submits a “formal accident package” of evidence relating to the 9/11 attacks to FAA headquarters in Washington, DC, but a manager at the center deliberately excludes from it an audio tape on which several air traffic controllers recalled their experiences with the hijacked aircraft. [US DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, 5/4/2004 ; WASHINGTON POST, 5/6/2004] This tape was created on September 11, shortly after the attacks occurred, when six controllers at the New York Center who communicated with, or tracked, two of the hijacked aircraft were recorded giving their personal accounts of what happened (see 11:40 a.m. September 11, 2001). [WASHINGTON POST, 5/6/2004] The tape was then logged into the center’s formal record of evidence. [US DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, 5/4/2004 ] Evidence Package Required for Air Accidents - FAA policy requires that a formal accident package be provided for all aircraft accident investigations, including military investigations, when FAA air traffic facilities were, or may have been, involved in the accident. A formal accident package must include “all pertinent records, personnel statements, transcriptions of voice recordings, charts, operation letters, letters of agreement, and facility memoranda.” [FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, 8/16/2000 ] Kevin Delaney, the New York Center’s quality assurance manager, has had an argument with FAA headquarters over whether the events of 9/11 should be declared an aircraft accident or an incident. Less information needs to be provided in an incident package than in an accident package. But as the 9/11 attacks are deemed an accident, Delaney is supposed to provide the names of everyone involved in them, including those that died at the World Trade Center. He must also provide transcripts and other information relating to the status of the aircraft involved, which would not be included in an incident package. [9/11 COMMISSION, 9/30/2003 ] Package Returned for Extra Work - The New York Center submits its formal accident package to FAA headquarters in November 2001, but the package is returned to the center the following month for additional work. It is re-sent and finalized in May 2002. Delaney Decides to Omit Tape - The formal accident package includes written statements about the 9/11 attacks that have been provided by controllers whose accounts were recorded on the audio tape (see (Between September 11 and October 2, 2001)). But Delaney makes a conscious decision not to also include that tape in the package. His reason for this, he will later say, is that including it would mean losing control of the tape, thereby being unable to keep a promise he made to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association that he would “get rid of” it (see October 2001-February 2002). At some point after the initial submission of the package, between December 2001 and February 2002, Delaney deliberately destroys the tape of the controllers’ statements (see Between December 2001 and February 2002). [US DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, 5/4/2004 ] Entity Tags: New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, Kevin Delaney, Federal Aviation Administration Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations

November 2001 or December 2001: FBI Translator to Have Exclusive Access to Wiretaps of Surveillance Targets with Whom She Has Links FBI translator Melek Can Dickerson recommends in a proposal to supervisor Mike Feghali that the Bureau’s Turkish language department adopt a new system for assigning translation tasks. Instead of the current system that randomly distributes assignments to translators, she suggests that each translator be permanently responsible for certain targets. Included with her proposal is a list of recommended assignments for each of the department’s translators. Under the proposed arrangement, she would be assigned to the phone lines of the American-Turkish Council (ATC) along with three other “high-value” diplomatic targets. Dickerson formerly worked for the ATC as an intern and is currently a personal friend of at least one of those high-value targets. She discusses her proposal alone with Feghali in his office for most of the afternoon. The following day, Feghali sends an email announcing that he has decided to adopt the new system proposed by Dickerson. [VANITY FAIR, 9/2005] As a result of the new arrangement, Dickerson, a mere “monitor,” has exclusive access to her targets’ wiretapped communications. (An FBI translator is either a “linguist” or a “monitor” for any given language. Linguists are more qualified and consequently have broader roles. For example, while linguists can to do verbatim translations, monitors may only produce summaries. [ANTI-WAR (.COM), 7/1/2004] ) From this point on, none of the recorded conversations for these targets will be reviewed by an official department linguist, or any other translator for that matter. [VANITY FAIR, 9/2005] Entity Tags: Mike Feghali, Melek Can Dickerson Category Tags: Sibel Edmonds

Between November 2001 and January 14, 2002: FBI Special Agent Suspicious about FBI Translator Who Has Lost Info on Several Wiretaps Dennis Saccher, the FBI’s special agent in charge of Turkish counter-intelligence, develops suspicions about Melek Can Dickerson, a translator in his department who has lost information on several wiretaps and who he believes has forged signatures on certain documents. He reports his concerns to the FBI headquarters and his boss, Supervisory Special Agent Tom Frields. [ANTI-WAR (.COM), 8/22/2005] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Melek Can Dickerson, Dennis Saccher, Thomas Frields Category Tags: Sibel Edmonds

November 2001: Pakistan Promises to Seal Off Tora Bora Region in Exchange for US Aid According to author Ron Suskind, some time in November the US makes a deal with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan will seal off the passages to Pakistan from the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan where Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are expected to gather. In return, the US will give Pakistan nearly a billion dollars in new economic aid. Pakistan will fail to effectively seal the border in the next month (see December 10, 2001) and almost the entire force in Tora Bora will escape into Pakistan. [SUSKIND, 2006, PP. 58] Entity Tags: Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan, United States Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

November 2001: Al-Qaeda Documents Recovered in Afghanistan Detail Plots, Apparent Involvement in 9/11

Al-Qaeda documents found in Kabul by CNN reporters [Source: CNN] As US forces invade Afghanistan, they and the journalists following them, uncover a quantity of al-Qaeda documents in training camps and houses used by the organization. The documents reveal a chilling array of terrorist plots. Some documents are apparently related to the planning of the 9/11 attacks. [OBSERVER, 11/18/2001] A New York Times reporter finds two houses in Kabul’s diplomatic district containing, among other papers, a map showing the locations of power plants in Europe, Africa and Asia; training notebooks in military tactics and bomb-making; a list of Florida flight schools and a form that comes with “Microsoft Flight Simulator 98”; a document entitled “Before and After Precautions For Using Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Warfare”; and a notebook on how to make nitroglycerine, dynamite, and fertilizer bombs, with a note next to one of the formulas saying “the type used in Oklahoma.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/17/2001] CNN reporters are led by Afghan police to a house in an upscale district of Kabul, which is apparently the same as the one visited by the New York Times reporter. In it they find a quantity of documents revealing al-Qaeda’s interest in acquiring nuclear weapons (see Mid-August 2001) and conventional explosives. According to David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert who is asked by CNN to analyze the documents, “These are people who are thinking through problems in how to cause destruction, for a well-thought-through political strategy.” [CNN, 12/4/2001; CNN, 1/24/2002; CNN, 1/25/2002; ALBRIGHT, 11/6/2002] However, an extensive review of the documents later concludes that al-Qaeda’s main activity was to support the Taliban. “Reporters for The New York Times collected over 5,000 pages of documents from abandoned safe houses and training camps destroyed by bombs.… The documents show that the training camps, which the Bush administration has described as factories churning out terrorists, were instead focused largely on creating an army to support the Taliban, which was waging a long ground war against the Northern Alliance.… They show no specific plans for terror operations abroad, and while hinting at an ambition to use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, they contain no evidence that the groups possess them.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 3/17/2002] Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations, Afghanistan, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

November 2001: FBI Inteviews Al-Qaeda Operatives in Sudan; Hussein-Bin Laden Link Is Dismissed FBI agent Jack Cloonan arrives in Sudan with several other FBI agents and is given permission by the Sudanese government to interview some al-Qaeda operatives living there. The interviews were conducted at safe houses arranged by Sudanese intelligence. Cloonan interviews Mubarak al Duri, an Iraqi. He lived in Tuscon, Arizona, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was al-Qaeda’s chief agent attempting to purchase weapons of mass destruction (see 1986). Cloonan will later claim that al Duri and a second Iraqi al-Qaeda operative laughed when asked about possible bin Laden ties to Saddam Hussein’s government. “They said bin Laden hated Saddam.” Bin Laden considered Hussein “a Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate.” Cloonan also interviews Mohammed Loay Bayazid, an American citizen and founding member of al-Qaeda (see August 11-20, 1988), who ran an al-Qaeda charity front in the US (see December 16, 1994). [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 4/29/2005] The CIA will interview them in 2002, but they apparently remain free in Sudan (see Mid-2002). Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Mukhabarat (Sudan), Mohammed Loay Bayazid, Mubarak al Duri, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Jack Cloonan Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

November 2001: FBI Obtains Key Informant against Yemeni Terror Financiers Mohamed Alanssi, a Yemeni currently in the US on business, goes to the FBI’s New York field office to offer his services as an informant against al-Qaeda. He offers the bureau information on alleged al-Qaeda financers working in Yemen and quickly becomes an important mole. His case is handled by Robert Fuller, an FBI agent who failed to locate the 9/11 hijackers in the US before 9/11 (see September 4, 2001, September 4-5, 2001, and September 4-5, 2001). Alanssi travels to Yemen to gather intelligence on occasions, and will film a key terrorism financier, Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, making incriminating statements in 2003 (see January 2003). In an affidavit supporting Moayad’s arrest warrant, Fuller will say that he has been working with a Yemeni informant, apparently Alanssi, since November 2001 and that the informant has provided reliable information and “contributed, in part, to the arrests of 20 individuals and the seizure of over $1 million.” However, the relationship between Alanssi and the bureau will later go sour and Alanssi will immolate himself in front of the White House (see November 15, 2004). [WASHINGTON POST, 11/16/2004] Entity Tags: FBI New York Field Office, Mohamed Alanssi, Robert Fuller, Federal Bureau of Investigation Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Terrorism Financing, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

(November 2001): FBI Translator Fails to Translate Wiretaps of Individuals with Whom She Has Connections Recently hired FBI translator Melek Can Dickerson (see (Late October 2001)) begins marking as “not pertinent” wiretapped conversations that concern certain high-value surveillance targets working at the American-Turkish Council (ATC). As it later emerges, Dickerson previously worked as an intern for the ATC and maintains ongoing relationships with at least two individuals under investigation. [WASHINGTON POST, 6/19/2002; NEW YORK OBSERVER, 1/22/2004; VANITY FAIR, 9/2005] She also manages to obtain, and prevent from being translated, assignments designated for co-worker Sibel Edmonds. These wiretaps, which she marks as being completed by Edmonds, concern the same targeted persons. [NEW YORK OBSERVER, 1/22/2004] Entity Tags: Sibel Edmonds, American-Turkish Council, Melek Can Dickerson Category Tags: Sibel Edmonds

(November 2001): Monitored Al-Qaeda Operative Connects KSM to 9/11 Hijackers When investigators search the home of Amer el-Azizi, a known al-Qaeda operative, they find an e-mail address that connects him to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). El-Azizi helped arrange a meeting between lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and an associate, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, in the run-up to 9/11 (see July 8-19, 2001), although he was monitored by Spanish authorities at the time (see Before July 8, 2001) and arrested in Turkey in 2000 (see October 10, 2000). His arrest shortly after 9/11 will be frustrated by Spanish intelligence (see October 2001 and Shortly After November 21, 2001) and he will go on to be involved in the 2004 Madrid bombings (see Before March 11, 2004 and 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004). An indictment released in 2004 will say, “A fundamental document… connects Amer el-Azizi directly with those responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and concretely with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed via the e-mail address identified as Safar86@usa.net.” The e-mail address “was being used by an individual who facilitated trips for al-Qaeda members in direct connection with [KSM], organizer of the attacks.” A detainee will also later say that el-Azizi was in contact with the 9/11 plotters via e-mail. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 4/29/2004] After 9/11, however, when the Spanish want to indict el-Azizi, the US will be reluctant to turn the information over to them, and it will take six months to get it. Despite this, problems persist in information sharing between the US and Spain and this has an impact on prosecutions (see Mid-2002-June 1, 2006). [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 5/4/2004] Entity Tags: Amer el-Azizi, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Other 9/11 Investigations, Al-Qaeda in Spain

November 2001-May 2002: US Captures Al-Qaeda Recruiter Who Has Lived in the US since 1999

Juma al-Dosari. [Source: PBS] In November 2001, al-Qaeda operative Juma al-Dosari is captured in Afghanistan. He is soon transferred to the Guantanamo prison. During interrogation in the spring of 2002, he reveals several aliases and that he was trying to recruit a group of US citizens in New York state known as the “Lackawanna Six.” Based on the aliases, US intelligence realizes they have already intercepted communications between him and Osama bin Laden’s son Saad bin Laden, and also him and al-Qaeda leader Khallad bin Attash. They learn he has a long history with al-Qaeda, having fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. He was arrested in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on different occasions for involvement in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombings (see June 25, 1996). He first went to the US in 1999, staying several months in Indiana. Then he got a job at a mosque in Bloomington, Indiana, in the autumn of 2000. He began traveling around the US as a visiting imam, but investigators believe this was just his cover while he worked to recruit for al-Qaeda. In April 2001, he visited Buffalo, New York, and helped convince the “Lackawanna Six” to go to Afghanistan (see April-August 2001). He left the US for Afghanistan in late September 2001. The FBI gets this information in May 2002 and begins monitoring the “Lackawanna Six,” as they are all back in the US. Investigators suspect al-Dosari recruited others in other cities, but they do not know who. [PBS FRONTLINE, 10/16/2003; PBS FRONTLINE, 10/16/2003] In 2007, al-Dosari will be released from Guantanamo without explanation and set free in Saudi Arabia (see July 16, 2007). Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tawfiq bin Attash, Juma al-Dosari, Saad bin Laden Category Tags: "Lackawanna Six", Key Captures and Deaths, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

November 2001-February 5, 2002: Saeed Sheikh Indicted for Role in 1994 Kidnapping A US grand jury secretly indicts Saeed Sheikh for his role in the 1994 kidnapping of an American. The indictment is revealed in late February 2002. The US later claims it begins asking Pakistan for help in arresting and extraditing Saeed in late November. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2/26/2002; NEWSWEEK, 3/13/2002] However, it is not until January 9, 2002, that Wendy Chamberlin, the US ambassador to Pakistan, officially asks the Pakistani government for assistance. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2/24/2002; CNN, 2/24/2002; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 2/25/2002] Saeed is seen partying with Pakistani government officials well into January 2002. The Los Angeles Times later reports that Saeed “move[s] about Pakistan without apparent impediments from authorities” up until February 5, when he is identified as a suspect in the Daniel Pearl kidnapping. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 2/13/2002] The London Times reports: “It is inconceivable that the Pakistani authorities did not know where he was” before then. [LONDON TIMES, 4/21/2002] Entity Tags: Daniel Pearl, Wendy Chamberlin, Pakistan, Saeed Sheikh Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Saeed Sheikh

Early November 2001: Al-Qaeda Convoy Flees Kabul Many locals in Afghanistan reportedly witness a remarkable escape of al-Qaeda forces from Kabul around this time. One local businessman says, “We don’t understand how they weren’t all killed the night before because they came in a convoy of at least 1,000 cars and trucks. It was a very dark night, but it must have been easy for the American pilots to see the headlights. The main road was jammed from eight in the evening until three in the morning.” This convoy was thought to have contained al-Qaeda’s top officials [LONDON TIMES, 7/22/2002] Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

Early November 2001: USA Today: Decision to Invade Iraq Made at This Time According to a September 2002 USA Today article, the decision to invade Iraq is made at this time. Significantly, the decision is made independent of normal policy-making procedures—a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq was not requested, members of Congress were not consulted, and the concerns of senior military officers and intelligence analysts were ignored. Explaining why the White House did not request a NIE on Iraq, an unnamed US intelligence official explains it didn’t want to detail the uncertainties regarding the threat Iraq allegedly poses to the US. A senior administration official says the White House did not believe an NIE would be helpful. However in September 2002, an NIE will finally be requested as a result of pressure from Congress. The classified version of the document will include many qualified and nuanced statements, but the shorter, unclassified version, which is given to Congress, will not include these uncertainties (see October 1, 2002). [USA TODAY, 9/10/2002 SOURCES: OFFICIALS AT THE WHITE HOUSE, STATE DEPARTMENT, PENTAGON, INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES, CONGRESS AND ELSEWHERE] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, US Congress Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism

Early November 2001-April 10, 2004: US Intelligence Monitors American Al-Qaeda Operative for Years before Arresting Him

Mohammed Junaid Babar. [Source: London Times] In early November 2001, a young man using the name Mohammad Junaid appears in several print interviews in Pakistan. He appears unmasked in video interviews shown on CNN in the US and ITN in Britain. He says that he is going to fight US soldiers in Afghanistan with the Taliban even though he is a US citizen and his mother was in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and barely survived the attack. He says, “I will kill every American that I see in Afghanistan, and every American I see in Pakistan.” In fact, his full name is Mohammed Junaid Babar. [BOSTON GLOBE, 11/6/2001; LONDON TIMES, 5/3/2007] He is a long-time member of Al-Muhajiroun, a radical Islamist group based in Britain but which also has a New York branch that Babar is involved with. [GUARDIAN, 4/30/2007] Placed on Watch List and Monitored - Babar is immediately placed on no-fly watch lists and monitored by intelligence agencies. The Washington Post will later report, “US counterterrorism officials said Babar first hit their radar screen in late 2001…” [WASHINGTON POST, 7/25/2005] Jon Gilbert, who interviews him in Pakistan in November 2001, will later say, “The authorities had been diligently tracking him since the day our first interview had been aired.” Babar left the US shortly after the 9/11 attack, and apparently had no ties with Islamist militants prior to his departure. Babar Lives in Pakistan, Works with Al-Qaeda - He does not return there for some time. Instead, he lives in Pakistan and frequently makes trips to Britain (but is not stopped from coming or going, despite being on the watch list). He becomes increasingly involved in helping al-Qaeda with logistics, such as fund-raising, supplying equipment from overseas, and helping to set up training camps in Pakistan’s tribal regions. He also becomes actively involved in a fertilizer bomb plot in Britain. in 2002, he sometimes he attends talks by radical imam Abu Hamza al-Masri with other members of the fertilizer plot in London’s Finsbury Park mosque. [WASHINGTON POST, 7/25/2005; GUARDIAN, 4/30/2007; LONDON TIMES, 5/3/2007] Monitored Meeting with Key Militants - Meanwhile, intelligence agencies continue to monitor him. Details on such surveillance are scanty, but he apparently is monitored meeting with lead 7/7 London bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan in England in 2003 (see 2003). Newsweek will also later mention that “Babar was tracked flying off [in early 2004] to South Waziristan in Pakistan, where he attended what some analysts believe was a terror summit that included the notorious al-Qaeda operative Adnan Shukrijumah and Dhiren Barot, the operative suspected of casing New York financial institutions a few years earlier” (see March 2004). His Internet use at a public library is also monitored, and he is said to exchange messages with al-Qaeda operatives. [NEWSWEEK, 1/24/2005] Arrested in US - Babar finally returns to the US on April 6, 2004, although why he does this is a mystery since his confederates in the fertilizer bomb plot had been arrested in Canada, Britain, and Pakistan just days earlier, and their arrests had been immediately publicized (see Early 2003-April 6, 2004). Babar is arrested by the FBI four days after his arrival, and quickly begins completely cooperating with the authorities (see April 10, 2004). Suspicions He Was US Agent Since 2001 - The London Times will later comment, “Some suggest that he may have already been an FBI agent” before he was arrested. [LONDON TIMES, 5/3/2007] The BBC will similarly say, “Inevitably there were suspicions that he’d been an FBI agent all along.” [BBC, 5/25/2007] But while that issue remains unclear, he proves to be an increasingly valuable source of information about al-Qaeda as more is learned about what he knows. One US law enforcement official will say in late 2005, “This guy’s connection to different cells and plots just seems to be expanding. He is the fish that is getting bigger.” [WASHINGTON POST, 7/25/2005] Entity Tags: Al-Muhajiroun, US intelligence, Al-Qaeda, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mohammed Junaid Babar Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Omar Bakri & Al-Muhajiroun

Early November 2001: Senior US General Describes Plan to Take Out ‘Seven Countries in Five Years’ General Wesley Clark, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, meets with an unnamed senior general at the Pentagon. Six weeks earlier, this general had told him, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq” (see September 20, 2001). Now Clark asks if the plan to attack Iraq is still under consideration. [DEMOCRACY NOW!, 3/2/2007; SALON, 10/12/2007] According to Clark, the general replies, “Yes, sir, but it’s worse than that.” He holds up a piece of paper and says: “I just got this memo… from the office of the secretary of defense upstairs. It’s a, it’s a five-year plan. We’re going to take down seven countries in five years. We’re going to start with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, then Libya, Somalia, Sudan, we’re going to come back and get Iran in five years.” When the general says the paper is classified, Clark tells him, “Well, don’t show it to me, because I want to be able to talk about it.” [WESPAC, 10/13/2006] Clark will tell CNN this paper “wasn’t a plan. Maybe it was a think piece. Maybe it was a sort of notional concept, but what it was was the kind of indication of dialogue around this town in official circles.” [CNN, 9/16/2007] Clark also later claims that when he sees the general again around early 2006 and asks him about the paper, the general replies: “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!” [DEMOCRACY NOW!, 3/2/2007] Entity Tags: Wesley Clark Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, US Dominance, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

November 2, 2001: Giuliani Reduces Number of Firefighters at Ground Zero, Following Recovery of Gold New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani angers firefighters when he decides to severely reduce the number of them that can search for remains at Ground Zero. Until now, up to 300 firefighters at a time have been involved in the search and recovery effort. Giuliani’s decision will mean no more than 25 at a time can do so in future. The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) later alleges that, also at this time, Giuliani makes “a conscious decision to institute a ‘scoop-and-dump’ operation to expedite the clean-up of Ground Zero in lieu of the more time-consuming, but respectful, process of removing debris piece by piece in hope of uncovering more remains.” So far, the bodies or remains of 101 firefighters have been recovered, out of the 343 who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11. According to the IAFF, the mayor refuses to even meet with local union presidents about the decision. Due to the ensuing public outcry, Giuliani will modify his policy and allow firefighters back on the pile at Ground Zero. The remains of another 113 firefighters will subsequently be found. The IAFF later alleges that “the mayor’s switch to a scoop-and-dump coincided with the final removal of tens of millions of dollars of gold, silver and other assets of the Bank of Nova Scotia that were buried beneath what was once the towers” (see (Mid-October-mid November 2001)). “Once the money was out, Giuliani sided with the developers that opposed a lengthy recovery effort, and ordered the scoop-and-dump operation so they could proceed with redevelopment.” [FIREFIGHTING NEWS (.COM), 3/8/2007; BLOOMBERG, 3/9/2007; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/10/2007] IAFF President Harold Schaitberger later says, “in my opinion, it was more important for him [to] find the gold than it was to continue to find and recover remains.” [MSNBC, 7/12/2007] Entity Tags: Rudolph (“Rudy”) Giuliani, International Association of Fire Fighters, New York City Fire Department Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Other Post-9/11 Events

November 3, 2001: Mohamed Atta Alleged to Be Iraqi Agent The Italian newspaper La Repubblica reports that Saddam Hussein’s interpreter, known only by the alias A.S., claims Mohamed Atta was an agent of el-Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret services. A.S. is sponsored by the Iraqi exile group the Iraqi National Congress (INC). He claims that it was Atta who planned the 9/11 attacks, not with bin Laden or the other 18 hijackers but with two officials of the Iraqi secret services: Farouk Hijazi, a former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, and Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a member of the Iraqi diplomatic corps in Prague, Czech Republic. [LA REPUBBLICA (ROME), 11/3/2001] Entity Tags: Farouk Hijazi, Mohamed Atta, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Mohamed Atta, Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links

November 3, 2001: US Is Said to Be Relying on ISI for Intelligence in Afghan War The US, lacking local agents and intelligence in Afghanistan, is said to be heavily reliant on the ISI for information about the Taliban. The US is said to be confident in the ISI, even though the ISI was the main supporter of the Taliban up until 9/11. Knight Ridder Newspapers comments, “Anti-Taliban Afghans, foreign diplomats, and Pakistani government security officials say that pro-Taliban officers remain deeply embedded within ISI and might still be helping America’s enemies inside Afghanistan.” A leader of the resistance to the Taliban says, “There are lots of (ISI) officers who are fully committed to the way of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.” Former ISI Director Hamid Gul says, “It is a foolish commander who depends on someone else’s intelligence, especially when that someone doesn’t like him and was once friendly with the enemy.” [KNIGHT RIDDER, 11/3/2001] Later in the month another article notes that the CIA continues to rely on the ISI for covert actions against the Taliban. One CIA agent says, “The same Pakistani case officers who built up the Taliban are doing the translating for the CIA. Our biggest mistake is allowing the ISI to be our eyes and ears.” [TORONTO STAR, 11/5/2001] Entity Tags: Hamid Gul, Osama bin Laden, Taliban, Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Afghanistan

November 3, 2001: Nepal Man Arrested at Chicago Airport Has Same Address as Other Terror Suspect; FBI Denies Any Connection

Subash Gurung. [Source: CNN/Courtesy WLS-TV] A young Nepalese man named Subash Gurung is arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport trying to board a United Airlines flight to Omaha with numerous knives, a can of mace, and a stun gun. He is in the US on an expired student visa. He is unemployed at the time of his arrest. Gurung claims that he was in a hurry and was unaware of the knives and other items in his luggage. But CNN reports that Gurung gave as his address an apartment building in Chicago that was also used by one of two terror suspects arrested on September 12, 2001 (see September 19, 2001 and After and October 20, 2001). This individual, Ayub Ali Khan (whose real name is apparently Syed Gul Mohammad Shah), lived in New Jersey but also used a Chicago address. A CNN government source says “many phone calls were made to and from that apartment, and credit card bills were paid from that address.” After being released by local police on bond, Gurung will be re-arrested the following day by the FBI for a weapons violation. Despite the apparent link to Ayub Ali Khan, the FBI denies any terror connection: “There is no allegation that this incident involves any suspected terrorist activity.” [CNN, 11/5/2001; CNN, 11/6/2001] Gurung will be convicted of a weapons charge in October 2002, and then deported. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/9/2002] Entity Tags: Subash Gurung, Syed Gul Mohammad Shah, Mohammed Azmath Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

(November 4-5, 2001): Despite Terrorism Concerns, Vice President Cheney Goes on Hunting Trip In the months following 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney is frequently moved away to undisclosed locations, supposedly for security reasons (see September 12, 2001-2002). He will tell CBS News, “[W]e feel it’s important, especially when the threat level goes up, to keep the president or myself separated.” He suggests there is a risk that terrorists could “take out the entire leadership of our government.” [CBS NEWS, 11/14/2001] Yet, in spite of this supposed threat, Cheney goes ahead with a pheasant-hunting trip at the Paul Nelson Farm in South Dakota. He goes to this private retreat each year with friends, and on this occasion is joined by his daughter Mary. The trip had been planned before January this year, and the party has the entire facility to itself. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11/5/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 11/19/2001; HAYES, 2007, PP. 363] CBS News’s Gloria Borger later questions Cheney about this trip, saying, “The American people are on a terror alert. You’re at an undisclosed location. Then the other week we learned that you went on a hunting trip. So did the Secret Service give you the all clear and say it’s fine to do that?” Cheney replies, “Well, the key thing here was I was away from the president. I wasn’t in the same location he was. We could not have both been eliminated at the same time by a terrorist attack.” [CBS NEWS, 11/14/2001] Entity Tags: Mary Cheney, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

November 5, 2001: Has Bin Laden Family Really Disowned Osama?

The Binladin Group logo. [Source: Bin Ladin Group] The New Yorker points to evidence that the bin Laden family has generally not ostracized itself from bin Laden as is popularly believed, but retains close ties in some cases. The large bin Laden family owns and runs a $5 billion a year global corporation that includes the largest construction firm in the Islamic world. One counterterrorism expert says, “There’s obviously a lot of spin by the Saudi Binladin Group [the family corporation] to distinguish itself from Osama. I’ve been following the bin Ladens for years, and it’s easy to say, ‘We disown him.’ Many in the family have. But blood is usually thicker than water.” The article notes that neither the bin Laden family nor the Saudi royal family have publicly denounced bin Laden since 9/11. [NEW YORKER, 11/5/2001] Entity Tags: Bin Laden Family, Saudi Binladin Group, Osama bin Laden Category Tags: Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden Family

November 5, 2001: More Than 1,000 People Reportedly in Secret Custody The Justice Department announces that it has put 1,182 people into secret custody since 9/11. Most all of them are from the Middle East or South Asia. [NEW YORK TIMES, 8/3/2002] After this it stops releasing new numbers, but human rights groups believe the total number could be as high as 2,000. [INDEPENDENT, 2/26/2002] Apparently this is roughly the peak for secret arrests, and eventually most of the prisoners are released, and none are charged with any terrorist acts (see July 3, 2002; December 11, 2002). Their names will still not have been revealed (see August 2, 2002). Entity Tags: US Department of Justice Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, 9/11 Timeline, Civil Liberties Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation

November 6-8, 2001: Fabricated INC Story of Muslim Terrorists Training in Iraq Electrifies Media, Builds Case for War

Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, posing as Jamal al-Ghurairy for Frontline. [Source: PBS] An Iraqi defector identifying himself as Jamal al-Ghurairy, a former lieutenant general in Saddam Hussein’s intelligence corps, the Mukhabarat, tells two US reporters that he has witnessed foreign Islamic militants training to hijack airplanes at an alleged Iraqi terrorist training camp at Salman Pak, near Baghdad. Al-Ghurairy also claims to know of a secret compound at Salman Pak where Iraqi scientists, led by a German, are producing biological weapons. Al-Ghurairy is lying both about his experiences and even his identity, though the reporters, New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges and PBS’s Christopher Buchanan, do not know this. The meeting between al-Ghurairy and the reporters, which takes place on November 6, 2001, in a luxury suite in a Beirut hotel, was arranged by Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC). Buchanan later recalls knowing little about al-Ghurairy, except that “[h]is life might be in danger. I didn’t know much else.” Hedges recalls the former general’s “fierce” appearance and “military bearing.… He looked the part.” Al-Ghurairy is accompanied by several other people, including the INC’s political liaison, Nabeel Musawi. “They were slick and well organized,” Buchanan recalls. Hedges confirms al-Ghurairy’s credibility with the US embassy in Turkey, where he is told that CIA and FBI agents had recently debriefed him. The interview is excerpted for an upcoming PBS Frontline episode, along with another interview with an INC-provided defector, former Iraqi sergeant Sabah Khodada, who echoes al-Ghurairy’s tale. While the excerpt of al-Ghurairy’s interview is relatively short, the interview itself takes over an hour. Al-Ghurairy does not allow his face to be shown on camera. Times Reports Defectors' Tale - Two days later, on November 8, Hedges publishes a story about al-Ghurairy in the New York Times Times. The Frontline episode airs that same evening. [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/8/2001; MOTHER JONES, 4/2006] Hedges does not identify al-Ghurairy by name, but reports that he, Khodada, and a third unnamed Iraqi sergeant claim to have “worked for several years at a secret Iraqi government camp that had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995. They said the training at the camp, south of Baghdad, was aimed at carrying out attacks against neighboring countries and possibly Europe and the United States.” Whether the militants being trained are linked to al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, the defectors cannot be sure, nor do they know of any specific attacks carried out by the militants. Hedges writes that the interviews were “set up by an Iraqi group that seeks the overthrow of… Hussein.” He quotes al-Ghurairy as saying, “There is a lot we do not know. We were forbidden to speak about our activities among each other, even off duty. But over the years, you see and hear things. These Islamic radicals were a scruffy lot. They needed a lot of training, especially physical training. But from speaking with them, it was clear they came from a variety of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco. We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States. The Gulf War never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were repeatedly told this.” He uses Khodada’s statements as support for al-Ghurairy’s, identifies Khodada by name, and says that Khodada “immigrated to Texas” in May 2001 “after working as an instructor for eight years at Salman Pak…” He quotes the sergeant as saying, “We could see them train around the fuselage. We could see them practice taking over the plane.” Al-Ghurairy adds that the militants were trained to take over a plane without using weapons. Hedges reports that Richard Sperzel, the former chief of the UN biological weapons inspection teams in Iraq, says that the Iraqis always claimed Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces. However, Sperzel says, “[M]any of us had our own private suspicions. We had nothing specific as evidence.” The US officials who debriefed al-Ghurairy, Hedges reports, do not believe that the Salman Pak training has any links to the 9/11 hijackings. Hedges asks about one of the militants, a clean-shaven Egyptian. “No, he was not Mohamed Atta.” Atta led the 9/11 hijackers. Hedges notes that stories such as this one will likely prompt “an intense debate in Washington over whether to extend the war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban government of Afghanistan to include Iraq.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/8/2001; COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, 7/1/2004] Heavy Press Coverage - The US media immediately reacts, with op-eds running in major newspapers throughout the country and cable-news pundits bringing the story to their audiences. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice says of the story, “I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing.” The White House will use al-Ghurairy’s claims in its background paper, “Decade of Deception and Defiance,” prepared for President’s Bush September 12, 2002 speech to the UN General Assembly (see September 12, 2002). Though the tale lacks specifics, it helps bolster the White House’s attempts to link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 hijackers, and helps promote Iraq as a legitimate target in the administration’s war on terror. (Five years later, the reporters involved in the story admit they were duped—see April 2006.) Complete Fiction - The story, as it turns out, is, in the later words of Mother Jones reporter Jack Fairweather, “an elaborate scam.” Not only did US agents in Turkey dismiss the purported lieutenant general’s claims out of hand—a fact they did not pass on to Hedges—but the man who speaks with Hedges and Buchanan is not even Jamal al-Ghurairy. The man they interviewed is actually a former Iraqi sergeant living in Turkey under the pseudonym Abu Zainab. (His real name is later ascertained to be Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, and is a former Iraqi general and senior officer in the Mukhabarat.) The real al-Ghurairy has never left Iraq. In 2006, he will be interviewed by Fairweather, and will confirm that he was not the man interviewed in 2001 (see October 2005). [COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, 7/1/2004; MOTHER JONES, 4/2006] Hedges and Buchanan were not the first reporters to be approached for the story. The INC’s Francis Brooke tried to interest Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff in interviewing Khodada to discuss Salman Pak. Isikoff will recall in 2004 that “he didn’t know what to make of the whole thing or have any way to evaluate the story so I didn’t write about it.” [COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, 7/1/2004] "The Perfect Hoax" - The interview was set up by Chalabi, the leader of the INC, and former CBS producer Lowell Bergman. Bergman had interviewed Khodada previously, but was unable to journey to Beirut, so he and Chalabi briefed Hedges in London before sending him to meet with the defector. Chalabi and Bergman have a long relationship; Chalabi has been a source for Bergman since 1991. The CIA withdrew funding from the group in 1996 (see January 1996) due to its poor intelligence and attempts at deception. For years, the INC combed the large Iraqi exile communities in Damascus and Amman for those who would trade information—real or fabricated—in return for the INC’s assistance in obtaining asylum to the West. Helping run that network was Mohammed al-Zubaidi, who after 9/11 began actively coaching defectors, according to an ex-INC official involved in the INC’s media operations (see December 17, 2001 and July 9, 2004). The ex-INC official, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, did everything from help defectors brush up and polish their stories, to concocting scripts that defectors with little or no knowledge could recite: “They learned the words, and then we handed them over to the American agencies and journalists.” After 9/11, the INC wanted to come up with a big story that would fix the public perception of Saddam Hussein’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Al-Zubaidi was given the task. He came up with al-Ghurairy. He chose Zainab for his knowledge of the Iraqi military, brought him to Beirut, paid him, and began prepping him. In the process, al-Zainab made himself known to American and Turkish intelligence officials as al-Ghurairy. “It was the perfect hoax,” al-Haideri will recall in 2006. “The man was a born liar and knew enough about the military to get by, whilst Saddam’s regime could hardly produce the real Ghurairy without revealing at least some of the truth of the story.” Al-Haideri will say that the reality of the Salman Pak story was much as the Iraqis claimed—Iraqi special forces were trained in hostage and hijack scenarios. Al-Zubaidi, who in 2004 will admit to his propaganda activities, calls Al-Zainab “an opportunist, cheap and manipulative. He has poetic interests and has a vivid imagination in making up stories.” [MOTHER JONES, 4/2006] Stories Strain Credulity - Knight Ridder reporter Jonathan Landay later says of al-Qurairy, “As you track their stories, they become ever more fantastic, and they’re the same people who are telling these stories, until you get to the most fantastic tales of all, which appeared in Vanity Fair magazine.” Perhaps al-Qurairy’s most fabulous story is that of a training exercise to blow up a full-size mockup of a US destroyer in a lake in central Iraq. Landay adds, “Or, jumping into pits of fouled water and having to kill a dog with your bare teeth. I mean, and this was coming from people, who are appearing in all of these stories, and sometimes their rank would change.… And, you’re saying, ‘Wait a minute. There’s something wrong here, because in this story he was a major, but in this story the guy’s a colonel. And, in this story this was his function, but now he says in this story he was doing something else.’” Landay’s bureau chief, John Walcott, says of al-Qurairy, “What he did was reasonably clever but fairly obvious, which is he gave the same stuff to some reporters that, for one reason or another, he felt would simply report it. And then he gave the same stuff to people in the Vice President’s office [Dick Cheney] and in the Secretary of Defense’s office [Donald Rumsfeld]. And so, if the reporter called the Department of Defense or the Vice President’s office to check, they would’ve said, ‘Oh, I think that’s… you can go with that. We have that, too.’ So, you create the appearance, or Chalabi created the appearance, that there were two sources, and that the information had been independently confirmed, when, in fact, there was only one source. And it hadn’t been confirmed by anybody.” Landay adds, “[L]et’s not forget how close these people were to this administration, which raises the question, was there coordination? I can’t tell you that there was, but it sure looked like it.” [PBS, 4/25/2007] No Evidence Found - On April 6, 2003, US forces will overrun the Salman Pak facility. They will find nothing to indicate that the base was ever used to train terrorists (see April 6, 2003). Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard Sperzel, Newsweek, Saddam Hussein, Taliban, New York Times, Sabah Khodada, Washington Post, United Nations, Vanity Fair, Nabeel Musawi, Public Broadcasting System, Mother Jones, Ahmed Chalabi, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, Chris Hedges, Al-Qaeda, CBS News, Bush administration, Central Intelligence Agency, Mukhabarat, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Francis Brooke, Lowell Bergman, Michael Isikoff, Mohammed al-Zubaidi, Jonathan Landay, John Walcott, Jamal al-Ghurairy, Jack Fairweather, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Buchanan, Iraqi National Congress Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links

November 7, 2001: Al Taqwa Bank Shut Down

Italian police raid Youssef Nada’s villa in Lugano, Italy. [Source: Keystone] The US and other countries announce the closure of the Al Taqwa Bank and the Al Barakaat financial network. President Bush says, “Al Taqwa and Al Barakaat raise funds for al-Qaeda. They manage, invest and distribute those funds.” US officials claim that both entities skimmed a part of the fees charged on each financial transaction it conducted and paid it to al-Qaeda. This would provide al-Qaeda with tens of millions of dollars annually. Additionally, Al Taqwa would provide investment advice and transfer cash for al-Qaeda. Al Taqwa is based in Switzerland while Al Barakaat is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Over 100 nations are said to be cooperating with efforts to block the funds of these two groups. [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/8/2001] Swiss authorities raid Al Taqwa-related businesses and the homes of bank leaders Youssef Nada, Ali Himmat, and Ahmad Huber, but no arrests are made. In January 2002, Nada will announce that the Al Taqwa Bank is shutting down, due to bad publicity after the raids. He will maintain that he and his organization are completely innocent. [NEWSWEEK, 11/7/2001; REUTERS, 1/10/2002] Days after 9/11, Huber called the 9/11 attacks “counterterror against American-Israeli terror,” the World Trade Center a “the Twin Towers of the godless,” and the Pentagon “a symbol of Satan,” yet he will claim to have no ties to the attackers. [PLAYBOY, 2/1/2002; NEWSWEEK, 3/18/2002] In searching Nada’s house, Swiss authorities discover a document entitled “The Project,” which is a strategic plan for the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate and defeat Western countries (see December 1982). By late 2002, both the US and UN will declare Al Taqwa Bank, Nada, and Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, another founder and director of the bank, supporters of terrorism. All of their accounts will be declared frozen worldwide. [US DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY, 8/29/2002] However, while Al Taqwa itself will be shut down, later reports will indicate that other financial entities operated by the directors will continue to operate freely (see June-October 2005). Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, US Department of the Treasury, Muslim Brotherhood, Ali Himmat, Al Taqwa Bank, George W. Bush, Youssef Nada, Ahmad Huber, Al Barakaat Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Terrorism Financing, Al Taqwa Bank, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

November 7, 2001: Bin Laden Claims to Have Weapons of Mass Destruction

A video still of bin Laden filmed during his interview with Hamid Mir in November 2001. [Source: National Geographic] Pakistani reporter Hamid Mir is taken blindfolded to a location somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan to interview bin Laden. The sound of antiaircraft fire can be heard in the distance. Bin Laden looks paler and his beard is greyer. While he doesn’t claim responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, he says that Muslims were behind it and that Muslims have the moral right to commit such attacks because they are done in self-defense. He says, “I wish to declare that if America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have the weapons as deterrent.” He also says, “This place may be bombed. And we will be killed. We love death. The US loves life. That is the big difference between us.” [REUTERS, 11/10/2001; NEWSWEEK, 11/26/2001] Entity Tags: Hamid Mir, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline, War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Other 9/11 Investigations, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements

(November 7, 2001): CIA Chief Names Four Most Wanted in Afghanistan Gary Berntsen, leader of the CIA effort in Afghanistan, names the four most wanted terrorist suspects in Afghanistan at a meeting of his team. They are al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, his second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda military commander Mohammed Atef, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). Berntsen places one of his subordinates in charge of these four men, giving orders to “find and kill” them. Berntsen also wants the Taliban’s top three intelligence officials killed. [BERNTSEN AND PEZZULLO, 2005, PP. 114] While the connections between the other three and al-Qaeda are well known by this time, the US government apparently first develops information indicating KSM is the mastermind behind 9/11 during FBI questioning of military training camp facilitator Abu Zubaida around April 2002. [NEW YORK TIMES, 4/22/2009] However, KSM is an known terrorist and one of the top 22 fugitives named by the FBI the previous month (see October 10, 2001). Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Gary Berntsen, Mohammed Atef, Osama bin Laden, Central Intelligence Agency Category Tags: Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Osama Bin Laden

November 8, 2001: President Bush Calls for Volunteer Civil-Defense Service President Bush follows up Attorney General John Ashcroft’s declaration of victory over terrorism (see November 8, 2001) with a prime-time speech calling for the formation of a volunteer civil-defense service and a larger National Guard presence at airports, both to keep Americans safe from future terror attacks. Bush gives the speech in front of a backdrop emblazoned with the words, “United We Stand.” Bush ends his speech with the exhortation, “Let’s roll!” thought to be the final words of Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer before he and his fellow passengers attacked their plane’s hijackers (see Shortly Before 9:58 a.m. September 11, 2001). Of the four major news networks, only ABC airs Bush’s speech live. [RICH, 2006, PP. 36-37] Entity Tags: George W. Bush Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

November 8, 2001: Ashcroft: US ‘Victorious’ in ‘Opening Battle in the War against Terrorism’ After issuing several terror alerts that came to nothing (see October 11-29, 2001 and October 29, 2001), Attorney General John Ashcroft declares victory in overcoming the threat: “[T]he home front has witnessed the opening battle in the war against terrorism, and America has emerged victorious.” He claims that “two periods of extremely high threat have passed” without incident. But in 2006, author Frank Rich will note that this assessment is based solely on Ashcroft’s word, since no evidence of actual threats will ever be advanced. [RICH, 2006, PP. 36-37] Entity Tags: Frank Rich, John Ashcroft Category Tags: Terror Alerts

November 9, 2001: Czech Prime Minister Says Atta and Iraqi Agent Discussed Plans to Blow Up Radio Free Europe in Prague Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman tells Colin Powell and CNN that during the alleged April 2001 meeting in Prague between 9/11 plotter Mohamed Atta and Iraqi diplomat Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the two men discussed plans to bomb the Radio Free Europe building in Prague, which also housed Radio Free Iraq. The claim is reportedly based on footage from surveillance cameras at the Radio Free Europe building which had shown al-Ani surveying the building in April 2001 (see 1999). The Prime Minister will later back away from the claim, explaining it was just a hypothesis raised by Czech intelligence. [CNN, 11/9/2001; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/16/2001; NEWSWEEK, 4/28/2002; WASHINGTON POST, 5/1/2002] Entity Tags: Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, Mohamed Atta, Colin Powell, Milos Zeman Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links

November 10, 2001: FBI Thinks Anthrax Attacks Were Caused by American Loner, Not Al-Qaeda or Iraq Th Los Angeles Times reports, “The FBI is increasingly convinced that the person behind the recent anthrax attacks is a lone wolf within the United States who has no links to terrorist groups but is an opportunist using the Sept. 11 hijackings to vent his rage…” The FBI is said to base this conclusion on “case studies, handwriting and linguistic analysis, forensic data and other evidence.” FBI investigators say they are looking for “an adult male with at least limited scientific expertise who was able to use laboratory equipment easily obtained for as little as $2,500 to produce high-quality anthrax.” They believe he is an “anti-social loner” who “has little contact with the public and carries deep-seated resentments but does not like direct confrontation.” However, these investigators admit that psychological profiling is a rough science, especially since they have little more than a small number of words written on the anthrax-laced letters. The letters appear to have tried to frame Muslims for the attacks. For instance, each letter contains the phrase “Allah is great.” Investigators say they are not completely ruling out an overseas connection to the letters, such as an Iraqi or Russian connection, but they consider it very unlikely. Investigators have not explained why they are so confident the attacks were caused by only one person. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 11/10/2001] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation Timeline Tags: 2001 Anthrax Attacks Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

November 10, 2001: Reporter Investigating ISI-Taliban Ties Is Expelled from Pakistan Daily Telegraph reporter Christina Lamb is arrested and expelled from Pakistan by the ISI. She had been investigating the connections between the ISI and the Taliban. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 11/11/2001] Entity Tags: Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Taliban, Christina Lamb Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI

November 10, 2001: Bush Dismisses 9/11 Conspiracy Theories In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Bush states, “We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty.” [US PRESIDENT, 11/19/2001] Entity Tags: UN General Assembly, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Media, US Government and 9/11 Criticism

Before November 11, 2001: Western Intelligence Obtains Copy of Secret Al Jazeera Interview of Bin Laden Western intelligence services obtain a copy of a secret Al Jazeera interview of Osama bin Laden. Al Jazeera had decided not to broadcast the interview, conducted on October 20 (see October 20, 2001), because its correspondent had not been allowed to ask his own questions, but had been told what to say by bin Laden. [MILES, 2005, PP. 179, 181] The fact that the video is obtained by Western intelligence is first revealed by the Daily Telegraph, which says the transcript proves bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11 and that it will soon be used as the “centrepiece of Britain and America’s new evidence against bin Laden.” [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 11/11/2001] Author Hugh Miles will note that bin Laden is actually ambiguous about his responsibility for 9/11 on the tape, and will speculate about how it was obtained. According to Miles, al-Qaeda kept a copy of the tape, but it is unlikely that al-Qaeda would give it to Western intelligence or CNN, which will air it later (see January 31, 2002). Therefore, the tape was probably obtained for the West by US authorities, who “made it their business to know all of Al Jazeera’s internal affairs.” [MILES, 2005, PP. 179-182] On November 14, British Prime Minister Tony Blair will refer to the video in a speech before the House of Commons and say, “The intelligence material now leaves no doubt whatever of the guilt of bin Laden and his associates.” [CNN, 11/14/2001; UK PRIME MINISTER, 11/14/2001] Yet the British government will say it does not have a copy of the video, only information about it from intelligence sources. [WASHINGTON POST, 11/14/2001] Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Al Jazeera, Tony Blair, Hugh Miles Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

November 10, 2001-Early 2003: Al-Qaeda Insider Becomes CIA Informant

Abdurahman Khadr. [Source: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] On November 10, 2001, Abdurahman Khadr is arrested in Afghanistan as a suspected member of al-Qaeda. His father is Ahmed Said Khadr, a founding member of al-Qaeda, and virtually everyone in his family is linked to al-Qaeda. He has known Osama bin Laden and played with his children since he was a little boy, and has frequently attended al-Qaeda training camps. However, Abdurahman has always been the “black sheep” of the family and reluctant to embrace the militant jihadist ideology. He begins cooperating with the US military. Due to his in-depth knowledge of al-Qaeda operations, soon he is frequently leading US officials on tours of Kabul, pointing out the locations of what were al-Qaeda and Taliban safe houses and strongholds. For nine months, he lives in a CIA safe house near the US embassy in Kabul. In the summer of 2002, the CIA trusts him enough to offer him a formal paid job as an informant. He accepts. In early 2003, he agrees to pretend to be captured so he can be shipped to Guantanamo and inform on the prisoners there (see Spring 2003). [PBS FRONTLINE, 4/22/2004; CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION, 4/20/2006] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Said Khadr, Abdurahman Khadr Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

November 11, 2001: Al-Qaeda Leader Al-Libi Captured While Fleeing Afghanistan Pakistani forces capture Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan national, apparently as he is trying to flee Afghanistan. Al-Libi is considered an al-Qaeda leader and head of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan for many years. [WASHINGTON POST, 6/27/2004] He is the first al-Qaeda figure captured after 9/11 of any importance. He will be transferred to US custody one month later (see December 19, 2001). Entity Tags: Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Key Captures and Deaths, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

(November 11, 2001): Hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s ‘Farewell Letter’ Intercepted

Aysel Senguen. [Source: CBC] Authorities in the US discover a letter apparently written by Flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah. It is believed the four-page letter, dated September 10, was written just hours before the 9/11 attacks. It is part of a package Jarrah mailed from the US to his Turkish girlfriend Aysel Senguen, a medical student living in the western German city of Bochum. The letter says, “I have done what I had to do.… You should be very proud, because it is an honor and in the end you will see that everyone will be happy.” It adds, “Hold on to what you have until we see each other again.” The package arrived in Germany shortly after September 11. However, due to Jarrah having made an error in writing the address, it was returned to the US and ended up in the hands of the FBI. Oddly, considering the letter is supposedly Jarrah’s farewell to Senguen, the rest of his package reportedly includes papers about his flight training and scuba-diving instructions. It is believed to also contain some small presents. Ziad’s uncle Jamal Jarrah says he thinks the letter is fabricated, and that it is suspicious that the address on it contained a mistake, as Ziad had known his girlfriend for five years and would not have made such an error. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11/17/2001; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 11/18/2001; OBSERVER, 11/18/2001; DAILY TELEGRAPH, 11/18/2001; BBC, 11/19/2001] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jamal Jarrah, Aysel Senguen, Ziad Jarrah Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation

November 11, 2001-December 2001: US Allows Warlords to Establish Control Over Most of Afghanistan

Gul Agha with US General D. K. McNeill. [Source: Rob Curtis/ Agence France-Presse] On November 11, 2001, top Taliban leader Mullah Omar concedes defeat and orders thousands of Taliban to retreat to Pakistan. Within a week, large sections of Afghanistan are abandoned by the Taliban. The Northern Alliance, however, does not have the means or the support to occupy those areas, and warlords take effective control of most of the country. On November 19, the New York Times reports, “The galaxy of warlords who tore Afghanistan apart in the early 1990s and who were vanquished by the Taliban because of their corruption and perfidy are back on their thrones, poised to exercise power in the ways they always have.” The warlords all claim some form of loyalty to the Northern Alliance, but some of the same warlords had previously been allied with the Taliban and bin Laden. For instance, the new ruler of Jalalabad let bin Laden move from Sudan to Jalalabad in 1996. [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/15/2001; GUARDIAN, 11/15/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 11/19/2001] For the next few weeks, there is widespread “chaos, rape, murder, and pillaging” in most of Afghanistan as old scores are settled. The Western media does little reporting on the brutality of the situation. [OBSERVER, 12/2/2001] The central Afghanistan government will later officially confirm the warlords’ positions with governor and minister titles (see June 20, 2002). In late 2005, it will be reported that warlords generally still retain their positions and power, even after regional elections. [INDEPENDENT, 10/8/2005] The US made a conscious decision shortly after 9/11 not to allow peacekeepers outside of the capital city of Kabul, creating a power vacuum that was filled by the warlords (see Late 2001). Further, in some cases the US military facilitates the return of former warlords. For instance, Gul Agha Sherzai ruled the Kandahar area in the early 1990s; his rule was notorious for bribery, extortion, drug dealing, and widespread theft. Yet the US arms his militia and US Special Forces personally escort him back to Kandahar, and he will become governor of Kandahar province. [NEW YORK TIMES, 1/6/2002; GLOBALSECURITY (.ORG), 4/27/2005] In 2003, Jane’s Terrorism and Security Monitor will look back at the US decisions in late 2001 and opine, “Perhaps the most serious tactical error was the restoration of warlords in Afghanistan. The common people were disaffected by the proteges and stooges of foreign occupiers who had carved Afghanistan into fiefdoms. Most or all of them were driven out by the Taliban and Pakistan and the remainder were on the verge of collapse or on the run.… US forces brought the warlords back, arming, financing and guiding them back to their lost thrones.” [JANE'S TERRORISM AND SECURITY MONITOR, 2/24/2003] Journalist Kathy Gannon will later write, “At the heart of these misguided machinations was Zalmay Khalilzad, the US president’s hand-picked envoy to Afghanistan, who choreographed the early US decisions” in the country. [GANNON, 2005, PP. 113] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Gul Agha Sherzai, Taliban, Mullah Omar, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Northern Alliance Category Tags: Afghanistan

November 13, 2001 or Shortly Before: Spanish Judge Issues Indictment against Spain-Based Radicals, Names British Intelligence Informer Abu Qatada as Militant Spiritual Leader in Europe Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon issues an indictment of militants based in Spain who are said to be tied to the 9/11 attacks. Some of them are arrested soon after (see November 13, 2001), although some are not and go on to be involved in the Madrid train bombings (see November 13, 2001). In the indictment, Garzon highlights the links between the Spain-based operatives and militants in Britain. Leading London imam Abu Qatada is described as “the spiritual head of the mujaheddin in Europe,” a view shared by many intelligence agencies in Europe, and accused of moving money to finance al-Qaeda operations. The indictment also says that Barakat Yarkas, head of an al-Qaeda cell in Spain, visited Britain 20 times (see 1995-February 2001) and repeatedly met with Abu Qatada and three other al-Qaeda leaders in Britain, Abu Walid, Abu al-Hareth, and Abu Bashir. Abu Qatada has been working with the British security services for some time and continues to do so (see June 1996-February 1997, Early December 2001, and October 23, 2002). [INDEPENDENT, 11/21/2001; THE INDEPENDENT, 11/21/2001; O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 107] Authors Sean O’Neill and Daniel McGrory will write, “Judge Garzon in Spain claims that if you take every major al-Qaeda attack, including 9/11 and the Bali bombings, then list all those who played a part in their planning, funding and execution, you will find a line that always draws you back to Britain.” [O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 112] Entity Tags: Abu al-Hareth, Abu Qatada, Abu Bashir, Abu Walid, Baltasar Garzon Category Tags: Abu Qatada, Al-Qaeda in Spain, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism

November 13, 2001: Al-Qaeda Convoy Flees to Tora Bora; US Fails to Attack Bin Laden gave a speech in front of about 1,000 supporters on November 10, 2001 in the town of Jalalabad, Afghanistan. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002] On the night of November 13, a convoy of 1,000 or more al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters escapes from Jalalabad and reaches the fortress of Tora Bora after hours of driving and then walking. Bin Laden is believed to be with them, riding in one of “several hundred cars” in the convoy. The US bombs the nearby Jalalabad airport, but apparently does not attack the convoy. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002; KNIGHT RIDDER, 10/20/2002] The Northern Alliance captures Jalalabad the next day. [SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 11/14/2001] Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, United States Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden

November 13, 2001: Spanish Al-Qaeda Leader Barakat Yarkas and Ten Associates Arrested

Baltasar Garzon. [Source: Associated Press] Spanish intelligence has been watching an al-Qaeda cell in Madrid for years, and has been aware since 1995 that cell members are committing a variety of crimes in Spain (see 1995 and After and Late 1995 and After), but none of them have ever been arrested. Finally, after investigators find links between the cell and the 9/11 hijacker cell in Hamburg (see Shortly After September 11, 2001), the decision is made to shut the cell down. On November 13, 2001 Spanish police arrest cell leader Barakat Yarkas, a.k.a., Abu Dahdah, and ten other alleged members of his cell, including Yusuf Galan and Mohamed Needl Acaid. Spanish police, led by judge Baltasar Garzon, appear confident that they smashed the al-Qaeda presence in Spain. However, a number of suspects are left at large who will go on to take part in the 2004 Madrid bombings (see November 13, 2001). [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/14/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 10/26/2004] Yarkas, Galan, Acaid, and others will be convicted for various crimes in 2005 (see September 26, 2005). Entity Tags: Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, Yusuf Galan, Baltasar Garzon, Barakat Yarkas, Mohamed Needl Acaid Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Spain, 2004 Madrid Train Bombings, Key Captures and Deaths, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

November 13, 2001: Spanish Militants Not Arrested Are Later Involved in Madrid Bombings On November 13, 2001 Spanish police arrest cell leader Barakat Yarkas and ten other alleged members of his cell. Spanish police, led by judge Baltasar Garzon, appear confident that they have smashed the al-Qaeda presence in Spain (see November 13, 2001). However, a number of likely suspects are left at large:

Moutaz Almallah. Spanish police will later say that he had contacts with Yarkas as far back as 1995, the year police began to monitor Yarkas. He is said to have served as the “political chief” of Yarkas’s cell. He and Yarkas were seen meeting with an al-Qaeda courier in 1998. He will move to London in 2002 to live with radical imam Abu Qatada (see August 2002). He will be arrested in 2005 for a role in the Madrid bombings but has yet to be tried (see August 2002). Curiously, in 1995, a police officer who also served as Garzon’s bodyguard, sold Almallah an apartment and stayed friends with him (see November 1995). [EL MUNDO (MADRID), 3/2/2005; BBC, 3/24/2005] 
Amer el-Azizi, who may have had a role in the 9/11 plot, is able to flee a police raid due to a tip-off from Spanish intelligence (see Shortly After November 21, 2001). 
Jamal Zougam, even though he has been under suspicion since 2000, and has been tied to al-Qaeda-linked imam Abu Qatada and Mohammed Fazazi, who preached at the mosque attended by the 9/11 hijackers (see 2000-Early March 2004). [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/20/2001; IRUJO, 2005, PP. 162-164] A French investigator had warned Spanish intelligence in June 2001 that Zougam was an important Islamist militant in a number of countries and that he should be arrested (see June 2001). Zougam’s Madrid apartment was searched by police on August 10, 2001, and investigators found phone numbers of three other members of the cell, plus a video of mujaheddin fighters in Chechnya. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 3/17/2004] 
Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet. Spanish intelligence began monitoring him in 2000 for his links to other members of the cell. He was photographed with Yarkas in October 2001 (see October 19, 2001). [IRUJO, 2005, PP. 182-186] Another informant who later appears as a protected witness will claim that Fakhet was also a government informant (see Shortly After October 2003). 
Said Chedadi is arrested, but is later released. He had been monitored traveling to London with Yarkas and giving money to Qatada. He will go on to have a role in the Madrid bombings (see 1995-February 2001). He also is roommates with Dris Chebli up until Chebli is arrested in June 2003 (see April-June 2003). [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/14/2001; EL MUNDO (MADRID), 10/27/2004] 

El-Azizi flees overseas, but allegedly instructs the other cell members not arrested to constitute new cells in Madrid and Morocco. Fakhet becomes a leader of the new cells. Even though the vast majority of those not arrested remain under surveillance, including Fakhet and Zougam (see Shortly Before March 11, 2004), they are able to stage the March 2004 Madrid train bombings (see 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004). Fakhet will blow himself up shortly after those bombings, while Zougam will get life in prison for his role. El-Azizi has yet to be captured. Yarkas and most of the others arrested with him will be convicted for al-Qaeda ties in 2005 and given prison terms (see 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004). [IRUJO, 2005, PP. 165-174] A Spanish investigator will later call Yarkas the mastermind of the Madrid bombings even though he was in prison since 2001, because virtually all of the bombers were connected to him in some way. “It is very clear to me, that if by mastermind we mean the person who has put the group together, prepared the group, trained it ideologically, sent them to Afghanistan to be prepared militarily for terrorism, that man is [Yarkas], without any doubt.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/26/2004] Entity Tags: Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, Baltasar Garzon, Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, Amer el-Azizi, Moutaz Almallah, Jamal Zougam, Said Chedadi, Barakat Yarkas Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Spain, 2004 Madrid Train Bombings

November 14, 2001: United Nations Retroactively Endorses US Invasion of Afghanistan Two days after the opening of the UN General Assembly, and one day after the Taliban defeat, the Security Council adopts Resolution 1378. Although it stays short of endorsing the military campaign, it comes very close to actually providing retroactive authorization. The resolution applauds the goals of the US’s actions, supports its motives, and condemns the the Taliban and al-Qaeda. [UNITED NATIONS, 11/14/2001] Entity Tags: United Nations Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan

November 14-25, 2001: US Secretly Authorizes Airlift of Pakistani and Taliban Fighters At the request of the Pakistani government, the US secretly allows rescue flights into the besieged Taliban stronghold of Kunduz, in Northern Afghanistan, to save Pakistanis fighting for the Taliban (and against US forces) and bring them back to Pakistan. Pakistan’s President “Musharraf won American support for the airlift by warning that the humiliation of losing hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of Pakistani Army men and intelligence operatives would jeopardize his political survival.” [NEW YORKER, 1/21/2002] Dozens of senior Pakistani military officers, including two generals, are flown out. [NOW WITH BILL MOYERS, 2/21/2003] In addition, it is reported that the Pakistani government assists 50 trucks filled with foreign fighters to escape the town. [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/24/2001] Many news articles at the time suggest an airlift is occurring. [INDEPENDENT, 11/16/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 11/24/2001; BBC, 11/26/2001; INDEPENDENT, 11/26/2001; GUARDIAN, 11/27/2001; MSNBC, 11/29/2001] Significant media coverage fails to develop, however. The US and Pakistani governments deny the existence of the airlift. [US DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 11/16/2001; NEW YORKER, 1/21/2002] On December 2, when asked to assure that the US did not allow such an airlift, Rumsfeld says, “Oh, you can be certain of that. We have not seen a single—to my knowledge, we have not seen a single airplane or helicopter go into Afghanistan in recent days or weeks and extract people and take them out of Afghanistan to any country, let alone Pakistan.” [MSNBC, 4/13/2003] Reporter Seymour Hersh believes that Rumsfeld must have given approval for the airlift. [NOW WITH BILL MOYERS, 2/21/2003] However, The New Yorker magazine reports, “What was supposed to be a limited evacuation apparently slipped out of control and, as an unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters managed to join in the exodus.” A CIA analyst says, “Many of the people they spirited away were in the Taliban leadership” who Pakistan wanted for future political negotiations. US intelligence was “supposed to have access to them, but it didn’t happen,” he says. According to Indian intelligence, airlifts grow particularly intense in the last three days before the city falls on November 25. Of the 8,000 remaining al-Qaeda, Pakistani, and Taliban, about 5,000 are airlifted out and 3,000 surrender. [NEW YORKER, 1/21/2002] Hersh later claims that “maybe even some of bin Laden’s immediate family were flown out on those evacuations.” [NOW WITH BILL MOYERS, 2/21/2003] Entity Tags: Taliban, Pakistan, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

November 15, 2001: Al-Qaeda Leader Reported Killed in Bombing Raid

Mohammed Atef. [Source: FBI] Al-Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef (a.k.a. Abu Hafs) is believed to have been killed in Gardez, near Kabul, Afghanistan. Atef is considered al-Qaeda’s military commander, and one of its top leaders. Initial reports claim he was killed by a US bombing raid, but later reports will reveal he was hit by Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone. [US DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 11/16/2001; ABC NEWS, 11/17/2001; NEWSWEEK, 11/11/2002] CIA Director George Tenet will later indicate that Atef was “a key player in the 9/11 attacks,” but the exact nature of his role has not been revealed. [TENET, 2007, PP. 187] Documents and videotapes are discovered by US forces in the rubble after the raid. Details on two upcoming al-Qaeda attacks are discovered. Investigators examining the videotapes find images of about 50 al-Qaeda operatives (see November 15-Late December 2001). [SUSKIND, 2006, PP. 57] Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Mohammed Atef Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Key Captures and Deaths

Mid-November 2001: Afghan Politician Says US Policy Prevented Bin Laden Capture

Ismail Khan. [Source: US Navy] Independent warlord Ismail Khan’s troops and other Northern Alliance fighters are reportedly ready to take back Pashtun areas from Taliban control at this time. Khan, former and future governor of Herat province and one of Afghanistan’s most successful militia leaders, later maintains that “we could have captured all the Taliban and the al-Qaeda groups. We could have arrested Osama bin Laden with all of his supporters.” [USA TODAY, 1/2/2002] However, according to Khan, his forces hold back at the request of the US, who allegedly do not want the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance to conquer Pashtun areas. British newspapers at the time report bin Laden is surrounded in a 30-mile area, but the conquest of Kandahar takes weeks without the Northern Alliance (see November 25, 2001). However, more reliable reports place bin Laden near Tora Bora by mid-November (see November 13, 2001). [CNN, 11/18/2001] Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, United States, Taliban, Osama bin Laden, Ismail Khan, Northern Alliance Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

November 15, 2001: Newspaper Questions Whether Flight 93 Was Shot Down For the first time, a major newspaper publishes an article strongly suggesting Flight 93 was shot down. The Philadelphia Daily News quotes numerous eyewitnesses who believe the plane was shot down. The FBI has reported a half-ton piece of an engine was found “a considerable distance” from the main crash site. “That information is intriguing to shootdown theory proponents, since the heat-seeking, air-to-air Sidewinder missiles aboard an F-16 would likely target one of the Boeing 757’s two large engines.” The article concludes, “No one has fully explained why the plane went down, or what exactly happened during an eight-minute gap from the time all cell phone calls from the plane stopped and the time it crashed.” [PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, 11/15/2001] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations

November 15-Late December 2001: US Finds Key Al-Qaeda Tape, Fails to Pass It On for Over a Month

A still from the casing video shows a US warship docked in Singapore. [Source: CBC] After killing al-Qaeda military commander Mohammed Atef and other operatives with a Predator drone (see November 15, 2001), US forces search the building where he was killed and find lots of evidence about al-Qaeda members and various plots. One of the pieces of evidence found is a casing video for an attack on US personnel in Singapore, which al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) have been plotting for some time (see June 2001). [SUSKIND, 2006, PP. 56-57] Shortly before dying, Atef instructed JI leader Hambali to conduct the operation fast, because of the US invasion of Afghanistan. [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, ALEXANDRIA DIVISION, 3/8/2006; US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, ALEXANDRIA DIVISION, 3/8/2006] In addition, JI is also plotting a wave of embassy attacks. A senior Western diplomat will later comment: “There was an imminent danger. Their plans could have been operational in a week.” However, many militants are arrested in Southeast Asia in mid-December and the attacks never happen. US officials initially claim that the passage of the video to Singapore helps with the arrests. But Singapore authorities later point out that they did not receive the tape until the end of December and they had already arrested everybody by then based on information they had acquired on their own. They had also found a copy of the video in a suspect’s house in Singapore. [WASHINGTON POST, 2/3/2002; WASHINGTON POST, 2/3/2002; DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 3/16/2002] Entity Tags: Mohammed Atef, Jemaah Islamiyah, Hambali Category Tags: Hambali, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia

Mid-November 2001: Bin Laden ‘Confession’ Video Made, According to US

Khaled al-Harbi (right) talking to Osama bin Laden or one of his doubles. [Source: US Department of Defense] A conversation between Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda spokesman Suliman abu Ghaith, and Khaled al-Harbi, a veteran of al-Qaeda’s jihad in Bosnia, is videotaped. A portion of the taped conversation is later said to be found by the US and will be used as evidence of bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11. [UNKNOWN, 2001; GUARDIAN, 12/13/2001; KOHLMANN, 2004, PP. 28-9] According to a translation released by the Pentagon, the man said to be bin Laden says: “… we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all… (inaudible)… due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is what we had hoped for.” He continues: “We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day. We had finished our work that day and had the radio on. It was 5:30 p.m. our time… Immediately, we heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We turned the radio station to the news from Washington… At the end of the newscast, they reported that a plane just hit the World Trade Center… After a little while, they announced that another plane had hit the World Trade Center. The brothers who heard the news were overjoyed by it.” [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 12/13/2001 ] The release of the tape, which will be said to be found by US intelligence officers in Jalalabad, will be a major news story, and the tape will be taken by the media as proof of bin Laden’s guilt. President Bush comments, “For those who see this tape, they’ll realize that not only is he guilty of incredible murder, he has no conscience and no soul, that he represents the worst of civilization.” British foreign secretary Jack Straw adds, “By boasting about his involvement in the evil attacks, Bin Laden confirms his guilt.” [BBC, 12/14/2001; FOX NEWS, 12/14/2001; CNN, 12/16/2001] However, the tape will later be disputed from three points of view:

The accuracy of the translation will be questioned (see December 20, 2001). For example, the man thought to be bin Laden does not say “we calculated in advance the number of casualties,” but “we calculated the number of casualties;”
An analyst will conclude that the tape was actually made earlier as a part of a US-run sting operation (see (September 26, 2001)); 
Some commentators will question whether the person in the video is actually bin Laden (see December 13, 2001).

Entity Tags: Jack Straw, George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency, Khaled al-Harbi, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bush administration, Suliman abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden, Other 9/11 Investigations, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

Mid-November 2001: Alleged British Al-Qaeda Informer Arrested and Released Atif Ahmed, an alleged co-conspirator of Zacarias Moussaoui, is arrested in London, but is released soon after. Ahmed was named as an associate by Moussaoui in August (see August 17, 2001) and the arrest follows a search of his flat, which produces enough evidence for an arrest warrant. The FBI works closely on the case with the New York Police Department and London police, and evidence about Ahmed comes from various parts of the FBI’s 9/11 investigation. Investigators also find a phone call that suggests Ahmed and Moussaoui were working together. [ABC NEWS, 11/14/2001] However, Ahmed is released a few days later and British security sources will later describe Ahmed as a minor figure in the London Islamist underground. [FINANCIAL TIMES, 9/19/2002] Moussaoui will later claim that Ahmed is a British agent and had foreknowledge of 9/11 (see July 25, 2002). Entity Tags: Atif Ahmed, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Zacarias Moussaoui Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Zacarias Moussaoui, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism

Mid-November 2001-Mid-December 2001: US-Allied Afghan Warlords Help Bin Laden Escape Tora Bora

Hazrat Ali. [Source: Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images] Hazrat Ali and Haji Zaman Ghamsharik, warlords in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, both later claim that they are first approached in the middle of November by US officers and asked to take part in an attack on Tora Bora. They agree. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002] By late November, the US-allied warlords assemble a motley force of about 2,500 Afghans supported by a fleet of old Russian tanks at the foot of the Tora Bora mountains. They are poorly equipped and trained and have low morale. The better-equipped Taliban and al-Qaeda are 5,000 feet up in snow-covered valleys, forests, and caves. [NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, 9/11/2005] On December 3, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor overhears Ali in a Jalalabad, Afghanistan, hotel making a deal to give three al-Qaeda operatives safe passage out of the country. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002] The US chooses to rely mainly on Hazrat Ali’s forces for the ground offensive against Tora Bora. Ali supposedly pays one of his aides $5,000 to block the main escape routes to Pakistan. But in fact this aide helps Taliban and al-Qaeda escape along these routes. Afghan villagers in the area later even claim that they took part in firefights with fighters working for Ali’s aide who were providing cover to help al-Qaeda and Taliban escape. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002] Author James Risen later claims, “CIA officials are now convinced that Hazrat Ali’s forces allowed Osama bin Laden and his key lieutenants to flee Tora Bora into Pakistan. Said a CIA source, ‘We realized those guys just opened the door. It wasn’t a big secret.’” While the US will never publicly blame Ali for assisting in the escape, the CIA will internally debate having Ali arrested by the new Afghan government. But this idea will be abandoned and Ali will become the new strongman in the Jalalabad region. [RISEN, 2006, PP. 168-169] CIA official Michael Scheuer later will comment, “Everyone who was cognizant of how Afghan operations worked would have told Mr. Tenet that [his plan to rely on Afghan warlords] was nuts. And as it turned out, he was.… The people we bought, the people Mr. Tenet said we would own, let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan into Pakistan.” [PBS FRONTLINE, 6/20/2006] Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Taliban, Michael Scheuer, Hazrat Ali, Al-Qaeda, Haji Zaman Ghamsharik Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

November 16, 2001: Some Al-Qaeda and Taliban Leaders Reportedly Escape Afghanistan According to Newsweek, approximately 600 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, including many senior leaders, escape Afghanistan on this day. This is the first day of heavy bombing of the Tora Bora region (see November 16, 2001). There are two main routes out of the Tora Bora cave complex to Pakistan. The US bombs only one route, so the 600 are able to escape without being attacked using the other route. Hundreds will continue to use the escape route for weeks, generally unbothered by US bombing or Pakistani border guards. US officials later privately admit they lost an excellent opportunity to close a trap. [NEWSWEEK, 8/11/2002] On the same day, the media reports that the US is studying routes bin Laden might use to escape Tora Bora [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 11/16/2001] , but the one escape route is not closed, and by some accounts bin Laden and others escape into Pakistan will use this same route several weeks later (see November 28-30, 2001). High-ranking British officers will later privately complain, “American commanders had vetoed a proposal to guard the high-altitude trails, arguing that the risks of a firefight, in deep snow, gusting winds, and low-slung clouds, were too high.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/30/2002] Entity Tags: Taliban, Al-Qaeda Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

November 16, 2001: Tora Bora Battle Begins

A US airstrike in the Tora Bora region. [Source: Gary Bernsten] Heavy US bombing of Tora Bora, the Taliban and al-Qaeda mountainous stronghold near the Pakistani border, begins. A large convoy containing bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders arrived in Tora Bora about three day earlier. The son of a tribal elder later recalls, “At first, we thought that the US military was trying to frighten the Arabs out, since they were only bombing from one side.” Rather than send in US ground forces in large numbers, the US chooses to supply two local warlords and have their fighters do most of the fighting while heavy bombing continues. Within days, a small number of US special forces are brought in to assist the local warlords. One of the warlords chosen, Haji Zaman Ghamsharik, was actually living in exile in France and has to be flown to Afghanistan. He is “known to many as a ruthless player in the regional smuggling business.” Between 1,500 to 2,000 of bin Laden’s fighters are in Tora Bora when the battle begins. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002; KNIGHT RIDDER, 10/20/2002] There are two main mountain passes out of Tora Bora and into Pakistan. From the beginning on this day, eyewitnesses report that the US bombs only one pass. [NEWSWEEK, 8/11/2002] The fighting and bombing will continue through early December (see December 5-17, 2001) while bin Laden and most of his forces escape via the other pass (see November 28-30, 2001). Entity Tags: United States, Al-Qaeda, Haji Zaman Ghamsharik, Osama bin Laden, Taliban Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

November 17, 2001: Laura Bush, State Department Decry Taliban Oppression of Women Laura Bush, wife of President Bush, temporarily takes over her husband’s weekly radio address to condemn the Taliban’s policies toward women. The war in Afghanistan will benefit women, she says. “I’m delivering this week’s radio address to kick off a worldwide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan, the Taliban.… The severe repression and brutality against women in Afghanistan is not a matter of legitimate religious practice.… Only the terrorists and the Taliban forbid education to women. Only the terrorists and the Taliban threaten to pull out women’s fingernails for wearing nail polish.… [I]n Afghanistan we see the world the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us.… The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.… Because of our recent military gains, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes.” Mrs. Bush’s radio address coincides with the release of a State Department report on “The Taliban’s War Against Women,” which describes women’s losses of rights and opportunities under the regime. [WHITE HOUSE, 11/17/2001; US DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 11/17/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 11/18/2001; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11/18/2001] Entity Tags: US Department of State, Laura Bush, Taliban Category Tags: Afghanistan

November 20, 2001: Israelis Who Videotaped WTC Attack Are Released and Deported

Oded Ellner, one of the five Israelis arrested on 9/11. [Source: Public domain via Israeli television] The five Israelis arrested on 9/11 for videotaping the WTC attack and then cheering about it (see 3:56 p.m. September 11, 2001) are released and deported to Israel. Some of the men’s names had appeared in a US national intelligence database, and the FBI has concluded that at least two of the men were working for the Mossad, according to ABC News. However, the FBI says that none of the Israelis had any advanced knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and they were released as part of a deal between the US and the Israeli government. After their release, they claim to have been tortured. [FORWARD, 3/15/2002; ABC NEWS, 6/21/2002] Entity Tags: Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Israel Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks (Mossad), Israel, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Omer Marmari, Yaron Shmuel Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Israel

November 20, 2001: Shoe Bombers Travel to Afghanistan to Meet Al-Qaeda Bomb Maker Two radical Muslims involved in a shoe bombing plot, Richard Reid and Saajit Badat, travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan to meet an al-Qaeda bomb maker named Midhat Mursi (a.k.a. Abu Khabab al-Masri). Mursi has been working on a plan to get enough plastic explosive to puncture a plane’s fuselage into a shoe and thinks he has finally succeeded. It is unclear where the explosives the two men later obtain for the plot come from. At his trial, Reid will claim that he obtains the explosives from a neo-Nazi group and then rigs a bomb he tries to detonate on an airliner himself. However, the prosecution will point out that a hair and a palm print found on the mechanism are not his. If the two men do obtain the explosives directly from Mursi, it is unclear how they manage to transport them back to Britain, to which they return on December 5. [O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 230-231] The war is raging in Afghanistan at this time (see November 26, 2001), but this does not seem to hinder them. Entity Tags: Midhat Mursi, Richard C. Reid, Saajid Badat Category Tags: Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, 2001 Attempted Shoe Bombing

November 21, 2001: Bush Wants Iraq Invasion Plan George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld speak in private. Bush asks the Defense Secretary what kind of plan the Pentagon has for invading Iraq. “What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret,” Bush says. When Rumsfeld says its current plan is outdated, Bush instructs him to devise a new one. “Let’s get started on this,” Bush says. “And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to.” Bush requests that discussion about Iraq remain low-key. “I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq,” Bush later explains to journalist Bob Woodward. Bush does not share the details of his conversation with Condoleezza Rice, only telling her that Rumsfeld will be working on Iraq. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/16/2004; NEW YORK TIMES, 4/17/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 4/17/2004; CBS NEWS, 4/18/2004 SOURCES: GEORGE BUSH AND OTHER TOP OFFICIALS INTERVIEWED BY WASHINGTON POST EDITOR BOB WOODWARD] When General Tommy Franks—who already has his hands full with the operation in Afghanistan—learns that the administration is considering plans to invade Iraq, he utters “a string of obscenities.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/16/2004 SOURCES: TOP OFFICIALS INTERVIEWED BY WASHINGTON POST EDITOR BOB WOODWARD] General Franks will meet with Bush and brief him on the plan’s progress on December 28 (see December 28, 2001). Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Thomas Franks, Condoleezza Rice Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism

November 21, 2001: Bush Says Afghanistan Is Just the Beginning President Bush states that “Afghanistan is just the beginning on the war against terror. There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them. We will not be secure as a nation until all of these threats are defeated. Across the world and across the years, we will fight these evil ones, and we will win.” [US PRESIDENT, 11/26/2001] A short time later, it is reported that “the US has honed a hit list of countries to target for military action in rogue regions across the globe where it believes terror cells flourish,” including Iraq. [GUARDIAN, 12/10/2001] Entity Tags: George W. Bush Category Tags: US Dominance

November 21, 2001: Opium Boom in Afghanistan The Independent runs a story with the title: “Opium Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the Taliban.” Massive opium planting is underway all across Afghanistan. [INDEPENDENT, 11/21/2001] Four days later, the Observer runs a story headlined, “Victorious Warlords Set to Open the Opium Floodgates.” It states that farmers are being encouraged by warlords allied with the US to plant “as much opium as possible.” [OBSERVER, 11/25/2001] Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Drugs

November 21, 2001: Flight 77 Remains Identified, Hijackers’ Identities Not Confirmed The remains of all but one of the people on board Flight 77, including the hijackers, are identified. However, the identities of the hijackers have still not been confirmed through their remains, and the FBI does not provide DNA profiles of the hijackers to medical examiners for identification. [NFPA JOURNAL, 11/1/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 11/21/2001; MERCURY, 1/11/2002] As of mid-2004, there still have been no reports that the hijackers’ remains have been identified by their DNA, except possibly for two unnamed hijackers. Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation

Shortly After November 21, 2001: Spanish Intelligence Frustrates Arrest of Al-Qaeda Leader The Spanish intelligence agency CESID (later renamed CNI) frustrates the arrest of a senior member of al-Qaeda in Europe, Amer el-Azizi, by Spanish police. Most members of the cell of which el-Azizi was a member were arrested shortly before, but el-Azizi had avoided the round-up by fleeing abroad (see October 2001). After returning to Spain, he again falls under police surveillance, but, according to Spanish police union head Jose Manuel Sanchez Fornet, his arrest is prevented by “interference” from CESID. Fornet will later say that a police recording made at this time shows two CESID agents going to el-Azizi’s house. This alerts el-Azizi that he is under surveillance and he flees his home. [EL MUNDO (MADRID), 4/29/2004] El-Azizi then remains in Spain for some weeks, selling his car to an associate. When his apartment is searched, police find more than a dozen bags with radical Islamic books and videos. They also find videos of bin Laden on his computer and pamphlets from groups like Hamas. [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 3/19/2004; WALL STREET JOURNAL, 4/7/2004; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 4/29/2004] El-Azizi was arrested and released twice before (see October 10, 2000). He helped plan a meeting for Mohamed Atta just before 9/11 (see Before July 8, 2001 and July 8-19, 2001), and will go on to be involved in the Madrid train bombings (see Before March 11, 2004 and 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004). Entity Tags: Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, Amer el-Azizi, Jose Manuel Sanchez Fornet Category Tags: Other Possible Moles or Informants, Al-Qaeda in Spain, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, 2004 Madrid Train Bombings

November 23, 2001: Report Suggests Hijackers Snuck into Cockpits The Boston Globe reports information strongly suggesting that at least one hijacker was inside each of the cockpits when the hijackings began. An airplane captain theorizes how they took control: “The most likely scenarios are something that was swift, where the pilots couldn’t have changed their transponder code and called the controllers. You think four times in one morning one of those crews would have done that. That means they had to be upon them before they could react.” On practice flights before 9/11, the hijackers repeatedly obtained access to cockpits by various methods. Perhaps the most important method was jumpseating, which allows certified airline pilots to use a spare seat in the cockpit when none is available in the passenger cabin. Airlines reciprocate to help pilots get home or to the city of their originating flight. Officials say they do not believe any of the hijackers were jumpseating on 9/11 despite media reports to the contrary. However, since 9/11 the FAA has banned the practice unless a pilot works for the airline in whose cockpit that person wants to ride. [BOSTON GLOBE, 11/23/2001] The 9/11 Commission later concludes that the hijackers didn’t use jumpseating because they couldn’t find any paperwork relating to jumpseat requests. Entity Tags: Federal Aviation Administration, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation

November 23, 2001: More Israelis Arrested in Wake of 9/11 The Washington Post reports that “[a]t least 60 young Israeli Jews have been arrested and detained around the country on immigration charges since the September 11 attacks, many of them held on US government officials’ invocation of national security.” An INS official who requested anonymity says the use of the term “special interest” for Israelis being held in Cleveland, St. Louis, and other places means the case in question is “related to the investigation of September 11th.” [WASHINGTON POST, 11/23/2001] Most of them are deported. However, Intelligence Online claims that “For the overwhelming majority of the ring’s members expelled, there was no problem at all with visas, and in the lists we only found a few minor cases of expired visas.”” [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 3/6/2002] Entity Tags: Immigration and Naturalization Service Category Tags: Israel

November 25, 2001: US Troops Arrive in Kandahar Amid Talk of a Secret Deal US troops are set to land near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, Afghanistan (see November 26, 2001). [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/19/2002] Apparently, as the noose tightens around Kandahar, Hamid Karzai, the new leader of Afghanistan, makes a deal with the Taliban. He gives them a general amnesty in return for surrender of the city. Taliban’s leader Mullah Omar is allowed to escape “with dignity” as part of the deal. However, the US says it will not abide by the deal and Karzai then says he will not let Omar go free after all. Taliban forces begin surrendering on December 7. [SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 12/8/2001] Omar escapes. Entity Tags: Mullah Omar, Hamid Karzai, Taliban Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

November 25, 2001: Bin Laden Reportedly Gives Last Public Speech to Followers It is believed bin Laden makes a speech before a crowd of about 1,000 followers in the village of Milawa, Afghanistan. This village is on the route from Tora Bora to the Pakistani border, about eight to ten hours by walking. In his last known public appearance, bin Laden encourages his followers to leave Afghanistan, so they could regroup and fight again. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002; KNIGHT RIDDER, 10/20/2002] It is believed he crosses the border into Pakistan a few days later (see November 28-30, 2001; November 28, 2001). Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden

November 26, 2001: Defense Official Asks for ‘Team B’-Like Assessment of Terrorist Intelligence Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodham, who works in Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s office, asks Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to “[o]btain approval of creation of a Team B” (see Early 1976) which “[t]hrough independent analysis and evaluation… would determine what is known about al-Qaeda’s worldwide terror network, its suppliers, and relationship to states and other international terrorist organizations.” The 1976 Team B exercise was a deeply flawed effort by conservatives and neoconservatives to second-guess the US intelligence community’s findings about Soviet military and intelligence capabilities (see November 1976). Feith studied under Team B leader Richard Pipes at Harvard, and shares his fundamental distaste and mistrust of US intelligence capabilities. Feith and Wolfowitz believe that “Team B” showed just how limited and misguided the CIA’s intelligence reporting could be, and think that the same “Team B” approach could provide heretofore-unrevealed information about Islamist terrorism. Feith sets about producing a report “proving” a sinister relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq (see July 25, 2002), while Wolfowitz begins work on what will become the Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). [SCOBLIC, 2008, PP. 218-220] Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, ’Team B’, Al-Qaeda, Central Intelligence Agency, Douglas Feith, Office of Special Plans, US Department of Defense, Richard Pipes, Peter Rodham Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

November 26, 2001: US Marines Land in Kandahar instead of Tora Bora

US Marines landing near Kandahar on December 10, 2001. [Source: Earnie Grafton / Agence France-Presse] A force of about 1,200 US marines settles in the countryside around Kandahar, Afghanistan. This will make up nearly the entire US force actually on the ground in the country during the war to remove the Taliban from power. Over the previous week, CIA Deputy Counter Terrorism Center Director Hank Crumpton had been in contact with Gen. Tommy Franks and other military leaders at CENTCOM, arguing that “the back door was open” in Tora Bora and the troops should go there instead. But Franks responded that the momentum of the CIA’s effort to corner bin Laden could be lost waiting for the troops to arrive. [SUSKIND, 2006, PP. 58] The marines will end up being largely unused in the Kandahar region while bin Laden will escape from Tora Bora. In 2005, Gary Berntsen, who was in charge of an on-the-ground CIA team trying to find bin Laden, will claim that Franks “was either badly misinformed by his own people or blinded by the fog of war. I’d made it clear in my reports that our Afghan allies were hardly anxious to get at al-Qaeda in Tora Bora.” [FINANCIAL TIMES, 1/3/2006] The Afghan allies the US relies on to find bin Laden will actually help him escape (see Mid-November 2001-Mid-December 2001). Entity Tags: Hank Crumpton, Thomas Franks, US Department of the Marines, Gary Berntsen Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

November 27, 2001: Rumsfeld Tells Franks ‘Look at Options for Iraq’ At the request of President Bush (see November 21, 2001), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld telephones Gen. Tommy Franks with instructions to work on war plans for Iraq. “General Franks, the president wants us to look at options for Iraq,” the general will later recall being told. In his memoirs, Franks will write: “‘Son of a bitch,’ I thought. ‘No rest for the weary.’” Franks will brief Bush on the progress of his work a month later (see December 28, 2001). [FRANKS, 2004; SALON, 5/19/2005 SOURCES: THOMAS FRANKS] Over the next few months, Bush will ask for and receive increasingly detailed briefings from Franks about the forces that would be needed if the US were to move against Iraq. The need to prepare for an invasion of Iraq, according to insiders interviewed by the Atlantic Monthly, hinders the US effort against bin Laden and the Taliban. [ATLANTIC MONTHLY, 10/2004] Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Thomas Franks Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism

November 28, 2001: Bin Laden Reportedly Escapes Tora Bora by Helicopter A US Special Forces soldier stationed in Fayetteville, North Carolina, later (anonymously) claims that the US has bin Laden pinned in a certain Tora Bora cave on this day, but fails to act. Special Forces soldiers allegedly sit by waiting for orders and watch two helicopters fly into the area where bin Laden is believed to be, load up passengers, and fly toward Pakistan. No other soldiers have come forward to corroborate the story, but bin Laden is widely believed to have been in the Tora Bora area at the time. [FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER, 8/2/2002] Newsweek separately reports that many locals “claim that mysterious black helicopters swept in, flying low over the mountains at night, and scooped up al-Qaeda’s top leaders.” [NEWSWEEK, 8/11/2002] Perhaps coincidentally, on the same day this story is reported, months after the fact, the media also will report a recent spate of strange deaths at the same military base in Fayetteville. Five soldiers and their wives died since June 2002 in apparent murder-suicides. At least three were Special Forces soldiers recently returned from Afghanistan. [INDEPENDENT, 8/2/2002] Other reports indicate that bin Laden crosses the border into Pakistan by foot instead (see November 28-30, 2001). Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden

November 28, 2001: Bin Laden Family Business Valued at $36 Billion; Osama’s Share Is Uncertain

Osama bin Laden’s father, Mohammed bin Laden, with Faisal al-Saud, the Saudi king in the middle of the 20th century. [Source: CNN] The Financial Times estimates that the bin Laden family’s business, the Saudi Binladin Group, is worth about $36 billion. Osama bin Laden inherited about $300 million at the age of ten on the death of his father, but he may be worth much more today. While he spends large amounts each month supporting terror, he reportedly gets large amounts from rich Saudis every month to make up for the losses. [FINANCIAL TIMES, 11/28/2001] The 9/11 Commission later disputes these figures and claims that bin Laden only gets about $1 million a year for about two decades until around 1994 (see August 21, 2004). [9/11 COMMISSION, 6/16/2004] Entity Tags: Saudi Binladin Group, Bin Laden Family, Osama bin Laden Category Tags: Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden Family, Osama Bin Laden

November 28-30, 2001: Bin Laden Reportedly Crosses Border to Pakistan Bin Laden made his last known public appearance on November 25, 2001, giving a speech in the village of Milawa, Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border (see November 25, 2001). According to later interviews with many locals in the area, it is believed he and four loyalists cross the Pakistan border between November 28 and 30. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 2/23/2002; CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002] According to another account, bin Laden crosses the border at this time by helicopter instead (see November 28, 2001). His voice continues to be heard until December 10 on short wave radio transmissions in the Tora Bora enclave he had proportedly left. According to later interviews with loyalists, he calls from Pakistan to Tora Bora to urge his followers to keep fighting. But according to some eyewitness accounts, bin Laden is still in Tora Bora to make the radio transmissions, then leaves with about 30 followers by horseback. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002; NEWSWEEK, 8/11/2002] Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden, Escape From Afghanistan

November 29, 2001: US and Pakistan Return Convicted Drug Warlord to Afghanistan Ayub Afridi, a well-known Afghan warlord and drug baron, is released from prison in Pakistan and sent to Afghanistan with the apparent approval of both the US and Pakistani governments. Afridi had just begun serving a seven year sentence after being convicted of attempting to smuggle over six tons of hashish into Belgium. The Pakistani government gave no explanation for his release nor pointed to any law allowing the release. The Asia Times claims, “Afridi was a key player in the Afghan war of resistance against the Soviet Union’s occupying troops in the decade up to 1989.” The CIA lacked the billions of dollars need to fund the Afghan resistance. “As a result, they decided to generate funds through the poppy-rich Afghan soil and heroin production and smuggling to finance the Afghan war. Afridi was the kingpin of this plan. All of the major Afghan warlords, except for the Northern Alliance’s Ahmed Shah Massoud, who had his own opium fiefdom in northern Afghanistan, were a part of Afridi’s coalition of drug traders in the CIA-sponsored holy war against the Soviets.” The Asia Times speculates that Afridi, an ethic Pashtun, was released to help unify Pashtun warlord support for the new US supported Afghan government. Afridi also served three years in a US prison for drug smuggling in the mid-1990s. [ASIA TIMES, 12/4/2001] Entity Tags: Pakistan, United States, Ayub Afridi Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Drugs

November 29-30, 2001: Neoconservative Group Encourages Bush Administration to Invade Iraq as First Step to Dominating Middle East

Christopher DeMuth. [Source: American Enterprise Institute] Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz arranges for Christopher DeMuth, president of the neoconservative think tank The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), to create a group to strategize about the war on terrorism. The group DeMuth creates is called Bletchley II, named after a team of strategists in World War II. The dozen members of this secret group include:

Bernard Lewis, a professor arguing that the US is facing a clash of civilizations with the Islamic world. 
Fareed Zakaria, a Newsweek editor and columnist. 
Mark Palmer, a former US ambassador to Hungary. 
Fouad Ajami, director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. 
James Wilson, a professor and specialist in human morality and crime. 
Ruel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East expert. 
Steve Herbits, a close consultant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. 

According to journalist Bob Woodward, the group comes to quick agreement after just two days of discussions and a report is made from their conclusions. They agree it will take two generations for the US to defeat radical Islam. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the keys to the problems of the Middle East, but the problems there are too intractable. Iran is similarly difficult. But Iraq is weak and vulnerable. DeMuth will later comment: “We concluded that a confrontation with Saddam [Hussein] was inevitable. He was a gathering threat - the most menacing, active, and unavoidable threat. We agreed that Saddam would have to leave the scene before the problem would be addressed.” That is the key to transform the region. Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly pleased with their report. So is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who finds it “very, very persuasive.” It is said to have a strong impact on President Bush as well. Woodward later notes the group’s conclusions are “straight from the neoconservative playbook.” [WOODWARD, 2006, PP. 83-85] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Steve Herbits, Paul Wolfowitz, Fareed Zakaria, Fouad Ajami, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Mark Palmer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Bernard Lewis, Christopher DeMuth, James Wilson Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: US Dominance, Iraq War Impact on Counterterrorism

Late November 2001: Satellite Phone Ruse Aids Bin Laden’s Escape

Abdullah Tabarak. [Source: Public domain] As US forces close in on Tora Bora, bin Laden’s escape is helped by a simple ruse. A loyal bodyguard named Abdallah Tabarak takes bin Laden’s satellite phone and goes in one direction while bin Laden goes in the other. It is correctly assumed that the US can remotely track the location of the phone. Tabarak is eventually captured with the phone while bin Laden apparently escapes. Tabarak is later put in the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. Interrogation of him and others in Tora Bora confirm the account. [WASHINGTON POST, 1/21/2003] This story indicates bin Laden was still at least occasionally using satellite phones long after media reports that the use of such phones could reveal his location (see February 9-21, 2001). The US will consider Tabarak such a high-value prisoner that at one point he will be the only Guantanamo prisoner that the Red Cross will be denied access to. However, in mid-2004 he will be released and returned to his home country of Morocco, then released by the Moroccan government by the end of the year. Neither the US nor the Moroccan government will offer any explanation for his release. The Washington Post will call the release of the well-known and long-time al-Qaeda operative an unexplained “mystery.” [WASHINGTON POST, 1/30/2006] Entity Tags: Abdallah Tabarak, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Remote Surveillance, Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

Late November 2001 or December 2001: CIA Devises Covert Plan ‘Anabasis’ to Provide Pretext for Full-Scale War with Iraq At the request of CIA director George Tenet, veteran CIA agents Luis (his full name has not been disclosed) and John Maguire devise a covert plan to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein. Under the plan, code-named Anabasis, the CIA would send a team of paramilitary CIA officers to recruit disloyal Iraqi officers by offering them large chunks of cash. The CIA would conduct a disinformation campaign aimed at making Hussein believe that there was growing internal dissent. Hussein would become increasingly paranoid and eventually implement a repressive internal security policy, mostly likely involving the executions of suspected disloyal officers. In addition, the plan calls for “direct action operations” (understood to be a euphemism for the assassinations of key regime officials); disrupting the government’s finances and supply networks; and conducting sabotage operations, such as the blowing up of railroads and communications towers. Finally, the plan includes creating a casus belli for an open military confrontation between the US and Iraq. The US would transport a group of exiles to Iraq, where they would take over an Iraqi base close to the Saudi border. When Hussein flies his troops south to handle the insurrection, the US would shoot his aircraft down under the guise of enforcing the US-imposed “no-fly” zone. The confrontation would then be used as a pretext for full-scale war. “The idea was to create an incident in which Saddam lashes out,” Maguire later recalls. If the plan worked the US “would have a premise for war: we’ve been invited in.” Implementing the plan would cost an estimated $400 million. [ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 6-9, 154; GUARDIAN, 9/7/2006] The plan will be canceled at the last minute by Gen. Tommy Franks (see After January 2003). Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Anabasis, John Maguire, Luis Timeline Tags: Alleged Use of False Flag Attacks, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links

Late November 2001: CIA Advises Bush and Cheney That Allies Won’t Help Trap Bin Laden, but No Action Is Taken

Hank Crumpton. [Source: State Department] According to author Ron Suskind, CIA Deputy Counter Terrorism Center Director Hank Crumpton briefs President Bush and Vice President Cheney about the looming battle in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, where about 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban are settling in. He points out the region is very mountainous, with many tunnels and escape routes. Bush asks about the passages to Pakistan that the Pakistani government has agreed to block (see November 2001). Using a map, Crumpton shows “the area on the Pakistani side of the line [is] a lawless, tribal region that [Pakistan has] little control over. In any event, satellite images showed that [Pakistan’s] promised troops hadn’t arrived, and seemed unlikely to appear soon.” Crumpton adds that the Afghan forces in the region allied to the US are “tired and cold and, many of them are far from home.” They were battered from fighting in the south against Taliban forces, and “they’re just not invested in getting bin Laden.” He tells Bush that “we’re going to lose our prey if we’re not careful” and strongly recommends the US marines being sent to Kandahar (see November 26, 2001) get immediately redirected to Tora Bora instead. Cheney says nothing. Bush presses Crumpton for more information. “How bad off are these Afghani forces, really? Are they up to the job?” Crumpton replies, “Definitely not, Mr. President. Definitely not.” However, the Pentagon is not voicing the same concerns to Bush. The marines are not redirected to seal off the passes. [SUSKIND, 2006, PP. 58-59] Entity Tags: Taliban, Hank Crumpton, George W. Bush, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region

Late November, 2001: US Soldiers Permit Massacre of Taliban

A mass grave dug up near Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. [Source: Physicians for Human Rights] Ironically, it appears that even as the US is allowing some Taliban and al-Qaeda to secretly fly out of Kunduz, Afghanistan (see November 14-25, 2001), it allows a brutal massacre of those who had to stay behind. The Sunday Herald later says, “It seems established, almost beyond doubt, that US soldiers oversaw and took part in horrific crimes against humanity,” which resulted in the death of thousands of Taliban supporters who surrendered after Kunduz fell to the Northern Alliance. The documentary, Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death, exposes this news widely in Europe, but the massacre remains virtually unreported in the US. [SUNDAY HERALD (GLASGOW), 6/16/2002] Entity Tags: United States, Northern Alliance, Taliban Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan

Before December 2001: Al-Qaeda Tests Chemical Weapon by Gassing Dogs, Recovered Videos Show

A dog exposed to chemical poison. [Source: CNN] An al-Qaeda video shows how the organization tested a chemical weapon by gassing several dogs. The video is undated but is believed to have been made before the US invasion of Afghanistan. It was found among a trove of al-Qaeda videos by a CNN reporter (see August 2002). The video shows a dog exposed to the vapors of an unknown chemical. The dog is seen going into convulsions and finally collapsing. The chemical may be cyanide or a nerve agent such as sarin. [NEW YORK TIMES, 8/19/2002; CNN, 8/19/2002] Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

November 30, 2001: Al-Qaeda Leader Approves of 9/11 Attacks but Denies Al-Qaeda Involvement

Mahfouz Walad Al-Walid. [Source: Globalsecurity.org] Al-Qaeda leader Mahfouz Walad Al-Walid (a.k.a. Abu Hafs the Mauritanian) gives the only media interview by any al-Qaeda leader besides bin Laden in the months after the 9/11 attacks. Speaking to an Al Jazeera reporter in Kandahar, Afghanistan, he says, “We are not responsible for [the 9/11 attacks] and therefore we are not responsible for religious explanations for it. That’s on the one hand. However, many clerics have issued clear religious rulings [in this matter]… and have proved that if this act was carried out by mujaheddin Muslims, then it was an unblemished act of jihad.” He also adds, “In the US there are [agencies] legally responsible for safeguarding the security of America and the Americans. It is they who should be held accountable.… Where were these apparatuses when these things occurred? These apparatuses have satellites, ground stations, millions of spies, and huge budgets. It is said that they know what is happening in the bedrooms, that they know the shoe sizes of the wanted [men]. How did a group of people manage to stay for years, to train inside the US, and to plan this operation?” [AL JAZEERA, 11/30/2001] Entity Tags: Mahfouz Walad Al-Walid Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements

Late 2001

Late 2001: NSA Domestic Wiretapping Ties Up FBI with Bad Leads The National Security Agency begins sending data—consisting of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and names—to the FBI that was obtained through surveillance of international communications originating within the US (see September 13, 2001 and October 2001). The NSA sends so much data, in fact, that hundreds of agents are needed to investigate the thousands of tips per month that the data is generating. However, virtually all of this information leads to dead ends and/or innocent people. FBI officials repeatedly complain that the unfiltered information is bogging down the bureau: according to over a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, the flood of tips provide them and their colleagues with very few real leads against terrorism suspect. Instead, the NSA data diverts agents from more productive work. Some FBI officials view the NSA data as pointless and likely illegal intrusions on citizens’ privacy. Initially, FBI director Robert Mueller asks senior administration officials “whether the program had a proper legal foundation,” but eventually defers to Justice Department legal opinions. One former FBI agent will later recall, “We’d chase a number, find it’s a schoolteacher with no indication they’ve ever been involved in international terrorism—case closed. After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration.” A former senior prosecutor will add, “It affected the FBI in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads. A trained investigator never would have devoted the resources to take those leads to the next level, but after 9/11, you had to.” Former NSA director Bobby Ray Inman says that the problem between the FBI and the NSA may stem in part from their very different approaches. Signals intelligence, the technical term for the NSA’s communications intercepts, rarely produces “the complete information you’re going to get from a document or a witness” in a traditional FBI investigation, he says. And many FBI officials are uncomfortable with the NSA’s domestic operations, since by law the NSA is precluded from operating inside US borders except under very specific circumstances. [NEW YORK TIMES, 1/17/2006] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, Bobby Ray Inman, Robert S. Mueller III Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties Category Tags: Remote Surveillance, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Internal US Security After 9/11

Late 2001: Israeli Government Reportedly Privately Admits to Running Spy Operation in US Before 9/11 The Forward, a popular Jewish weekly in the US, will later report that at the end of 2001, the Israeli government admits to having conducted a large-scale spying operation in the US before 9/11, using art students and moving vans as cover stories. The Forward quotes an anonymous former US official said to have been regularly briefed about the US investigation into Israeli spying: “The assessment was that Urban Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it. The conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local Arabs but that they could [be deported] because they did not know anything about 9/11.” He further claims that US officials confront the Israeli government at this time and Israel privately admits the operation while continuing to publicly deny it. Israel privately apologizes for violating a secret gentlemen’s agreement between the two countries under which espionage on each other’s soil is coordinated in advance. The Forward notes, “Most experts and former officials interviewed for this article said that such so-called unilateral or uncoordinated Israeli monitoring of radical Muslims in America would not be surprising.” [FORWARD, 3/15/2002] In 2007, Mark Perelman, the author of the 2002 Forward story that made these claims, will say he still stands by his story and his sources in the Mossad don’t deny it. CounterPunch also will claim to independently confirm Israel’s admission through two former CIA officers. [COUNTERPUNCH, 2/7/2007] Entity Tags: Marc Perelman, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Israel, Israel Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks (Mossad) Category Tags: Israel

Late 2001: Lead 7/7 London Bomber Works with Al-Qaeda Leaders, Gets Explosives Training in Southeast Asia In July 2001, Mohammad Sidique Khan, the lead suicide bomber in the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), trains in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan (see July 2001). Presumably later in the year, he is sent on a mission to Southeast Asia, where he meets al-Qaeda leader Hambali. Making a total of two trips to the region, Khan is assigned to assess for al-Qaeda how much funding its Southeast Asian affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) needs. This is according to a militant who will later be jailed in Malaysia. This militant says he takes Khan to meet Nasir Abbas, a JI leader, who then takes Khan to a JI training camp on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, where Khan learns bomb-making skills. Abbas will later corroborate the account after being captured in Indonesia. [TIME, 9/26/2005; MANILA TIMES, 10/27/2005] Abbas will claim that while Khan is in the Philippines, he meets Azhari Husin, a chief bomb-maker for JI who is linked to most of JI’s major bombings. While Husin is Indonesian, he studied in Reading, England, and received a doctorate in engineering there in 1990. [EVENING STANDARD, 10/26/2005] Abbas, the brother-in-law of Ali Gufron, another JI leader and one of the masterminds of the 2002 Bali bombings, will be captured in April 2003. He will be able to avoid a jail term by fully cooperating with the authorities, but it is unknown if his information about Khan is shared with British intelligence before the 7/7 bombings. [NEW STRAITS TIMES, 4/3/2004] Entity Tags: Hambali, Ali Gufron, Azhari Husin, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Jemaah Islamiyah, Nasir Abbas Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia, 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism

Late 2001: President Bush Fails to Fund Program to Reform Radical Islamist Boarding Schools in Pakistan Not long after 9/11, US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin proposes a substitute for the mostly private funding of madrassas [religious boarding schools] in Pakistan. There are over 10,000 madrassas in that country, and many of them teach a radical form of Islam that promotes Islamist militancy. Counterterrorism “tsar” Wayne Downing supports Chamberlin’s idea, and says the madrassa system is “the root of many of the recruits for the Islamist movement.” In early 2001, the Pakistani government approved a plan that would require the completely unregulated madrassas to register with the government for the first time, halt all funding from abroad (which often comes from militant supporters in Saudi Arabia), and modify their curricula to teach modern subjects such as math, science, and history. However, Pakistan lacks the money for an education system to replace the madrassas. In late 2001, President Bush promises Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that he will fund a $300 million education plan. But the plan does not survive the White House budget request that year. The madrassas are not reformed in any way—even the plan to have them register is dropped. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid will later comment, “The US State Department and USAID maintained the charade that Pakistan was actively carrying out reforms.” [WASHINGTON POST, 10/22/2004; RASHID, 2008, PP. 235-236] Entity Tags: Wayne Downing, George W. Bush, US Department of State, Pervez Musharraf, USAID Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

Late 2001: German Intelligence Reportedly Prevents Arrest of Alleged Al-Qaeda-CIA Double Agent with 9/11 Foreknowledge Al-Qaeda operative Luai Sakra apparently goes into hiding in the region of Stuttgart, Germany, after 9/11. He reportedly gave details of the 9/11 attacks to the Syrian government shortly before 9/11 (see September 10, 2001). The Syrians then passed this on to the CIA shortly after 9/11. According to Der Spiegel, while Sakra’s name was not made public, “For the Mossad and the CIA he [soon] became one of the most wanted men in the world.” [DER SPIEGEL (HAMBURG), 8/15/2005] In late 2005, after Sakra’s arrest in Turkey (see July 30, 2005), the German television news show Panorama will report that the German BKA (Federal Office of Criminal Investigation) suspects the German BND (Federal Intelligence Service) to have helped Sakra escape from Germany in late 2001. Supposedly, German police had learned where he was staying in Germany, but the BND enabled him to escape via France to Syria in order to prevent further investigations about him. Panorama will report that Sakra was secretly still working for Syrian intelligence and was giving them information about al-Qaeda’s leadership. Sakra will go on to mastermind a series of suicide bombings in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2003 (see November 15-20, 2003) before being arrested in 2005 (see July 30, 2005). [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 10/27/2005] The Bundestag [lower chamber of the German parliament] Parliamentary Control Body will meet in November 2005 to discuss the allegations, but the session is held in secret and what is said exactly will not be not publicly revealed. [BBC, 11/9/2005] The Bundestag will later issue a short statement clearing the BND of any wrongdoing in the case. [DEUTSCHER BUNDESTAG, 11/30/2005] But in 2007, a book by former CIA Director George Tenet will indicate that not only did Sakra have some foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, but he was an informant for the CIA and Syrian intelligence before 9/11 as well (see September 10, 2001). Other evidence suggests Sakra was also an informant for Turkish intelligence before 9/11 (see Early August 2001). If he was an informant for any of these countries, it would explain why the BND might have wanted to protect him from arrest and investigation. Entity Tags: Luai Sakra, George J. Tenet, Bundestag, Bundeskriminalamt Germany, Central Intelligence Agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Germany, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Luai Sakra

Late 2001: KSM Sheltered by Royal Family Members in Qatar The New York Times will later report that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) hides in Qatar for two weeks with the support of some members of the Qatari royal family. KSM stays there “with the help of prominent patrons” after fleeing from Kuwait. One of the Qatari royals sheltering KSM is possibly Abdul Karim al-Thani, who has repeatedly sheltered Islamist militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and given passports and more than $1 million to al-Qaeda. It is also possible that KSM may have received help from Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, who is Qatar’s Interior Minister by this time and who allowed KSM live on his farm for several years until 1996 (see January-May 1996). CIA Director George Tenet is reportedly infuriated, but no action is taken. In fact, the US military will base its headquarters for the Iraq war in Qatar (see March 28, 2003). [NEW YORK TIMES, 2/6/2003] Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abdul Karim al-Thani, Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, Al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

(Late 2001): Scientist Linked to Al-Qaeda Interrogated, then Released by Pakistani Authorities; FBI Unable to Extradite Suspect Abdur Rauf, a Pakistani microbiologist whose letters to Ayman al-Zawahiri were uncovered by coalition forces in Kandahar (see (1999-2001)), is arrested and interrogated by Pakistani police. US officials are initially satisfied by the cooperation they are receiving from Pakistan. Rauf consents to questioning and provides useful information. However, Pakistan resists US efforts to bring criminal charges, including indictment and prosecution in the United States. In 2003, Pakistani authorities will cut off FBI access to Rauf, claiming that there is not enough evidence to charge him. A 2006 report by the Washington Post will find that the scientist has been allowed to return to a normal life and that the FBI investigation is on “inactive status.” [WASHINGTON POST, 10/31/2006] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Abdur Rauf Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

Late 2001-Mid-March 2002: CIA Looks to Brutal Torture Techniques of Egyptians, Saudis, and Soviets in Setting Up Its Interrogation Program On September 17, 2001, President Bush gave the CIA broad powers to interrogate prisoners (see September 17, 2001), but the CIA does not have many officers trained in interrogation. As a result, in late 2001 and early 2002, while the CIA waits for high-ranking al-Qaeda leaders to be captured, senior CIA officials begin investigating which interrogation procedures to use. [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/10/2006] The CIA “construct[s] its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/4/2007] Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are notorious for their brutal and widespread use of torture. The Soviet interrogation techniques mentioned were designed not to get valuable intelligence, but to generate propaganda by getting captured US soldiers to make statements denouncing the US. The CIA hires two psychologists willing to use the techniques, James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, even though the two have no never conducted any real world interrogations and there is no evidence at the time (or later) that the Soviet torture techniques are effective in obtaining valuable intelligence and not just false confessions (see Mid-April 2002). [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/10/2006; NEW YORK TIMES, 10/4/2007] In mid-March 2002, the CIA will draw up a list of ten permissible aggressive interrogation techniques based on the advice from these governments and psychologists (see Mid-March 2002). Entity Tags: James Elmer Mitchell, Bruce Jessen, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives Category Tags: Destruction of CIA Tapes, High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

Late 2001 and After: CNN Limits Critical Reporting of Bush Administration Due to Pressure and Patriotic Fervor

Walter Isaacson. [Source: Aspen Institute] In 2007, Walter Isaacson, chairman and CEO of CNN in the early 2000s, will say: “There was a patriotic fervor and the Administration used it so that if you challenged anything you were made to feel that there was something wrong with that.… And there was even almost a patriotism police which, you know, they’d be up there on the internet sort of picking anything a Christiane Amanpour, or somebody else would say as if it were disloyal… Especially right after 9/11. Especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on. There was a real sense that you don’t get that critical of a government that’s leading us in war time.” When CNN starts showing footage of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, people in the Bush administration and “big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’” [PBS, 4/25/2007] So in October 2001, Isaacson sends his staff a memo, which says, “It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan.” He orders CNN to balance such coverage with reminders of the 9/11 attacks. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/31/2001] Isaacson will add, “[W]e were caught between this patriotic fervor and a competitor [Fox News] who was using that to their advantage; they were pushing the fact that CNN was too liberal that we were sort of vaguely anti-American.” An anonymous CNN reporter will also later say, “Everybody on staff just sort of knew not to push too hard to do stories critical of the Bush Administration.” [PBS, 4/25/2007] Entity Tags: Walter Isaacson, CNN, Christiane Amanpour Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda, War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Media, Afghanistan

December

December 2001-Spring 2002: Pakistani Government Allows Al-Qaeda and Taliban to Regroup in Pakistan’s Tribal Region

The mountains of Waziristan. [Source: BBC] (click image to enlarge) In December 2001, al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan are defeated in the battle of Tora Bora, and the survivors generally flee across the border into Pakistan’s tribal region. Many flee into the region of South Waziristan, since it is directly adjacent to Tora Bora and there are no Pakistani government forces guarding the border there (see December 10, 2001). In March 2002, several hundred more militants flee from Afghanistan into South Waziristan after Operation Anaconda (see March 2-13, 2002). They rebuild their central command there, particularly in a remote part of South Waziristan known as the Shakai valley. [NEW YORK TIMES, 6/30/2008] Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid will later describe South Waziristan: “With its high mountains, steep slopes, deep ravines littered with broken rock and shale, and its thick forests, it was an ideal hideout. Many of its valleys were virtually inaccessible, except along steep winding paths that required the agility of mountain climbers, and were easy to defend.” [RASHID, 2008, PP. 148, 268] In the spring of 2002, US intelligence begins reporting that large numbers of foreigners are hiding in South Waziristan and neighboring North Waziristan. But Gen. Ali Jan Orakzai, the commander of Pakistani forces in the area containing Waziristan, is skeptical. Born in the tribal region, Orakzai is said to be Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s close friend and main adviser on the region. Even in 2008, he will tell the New York Times that he considered the US warnings about al-Qaeda to be mere “guesswork” and that his soldiers “found nothing.” Former US intelligence officials will agree that nothing is found, because they say that Orakzai’s military forces only enter the region in large, slow-moving sweeps that are easily avoided by militants. Robert Grenier, CIA station chief in Pakistan at the time, will later suggest that Orakzai did not want to find the foreigners as this could have caused trouble, including a tribal uprising. Grenier will say, “Orakzai and others didn’t want to believe [the foreigners were there] because it would have been an inconvenient fact.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 6/30/2008] Entity Tags: Robert Grenier, Al-Qaeda, Ali Jan Orakzai, Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region

Late 2001-Spring 2002: European Intelligence Agencies Monitor Al-Qaeda Relocating in Pakistan In September 2002, shortly after the arrest of al-Qaeda leader Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Karachi, Pakistan (see September 11, 2002), the New York Times will report: “Even before Mr. bin al-Shibh’s arrest, European officials warned that al-Qaeda appeared to have shifted much of its operations in Pakistan to Karachi. A year ago, 90 percent of communications and other links between suspected al-Qaeda members in Europe and individuals in Pakistan were traced to the city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border, a European law enforcement official said. As of this spring, roughly half of intercepted communications and other links were being traced to Karachi.” A European diplomat comments, “Obviously the brains and money for the terrorists have shifted from Peshawar to Karachi.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/15/2002] Presumably many of the communications to Peshawar involve al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida, considered a key communications hub and who has been monitored by a number of intelligence agencies, including the French, since at least 1998 (see October 1998 and After). Zubaida moves from his long-time base in Peshawar to the Pakistani city of Faisalabad after 9/11 and is captured there in March 2002 (see March 28, 2002). Al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh are interviewed in Karachi around June 2002, a fact that is quickly shared with US intelligence (see June 14, 2002 and Shortly After). Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Abu Zubaida, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Abu Zubaida, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Remote Surveillance

December 2001: CIA Unable to Question Pakistani Nuclear Scientists Linked to Pro-Al-Qaeda Charity Front

A. Q. Khan (left) and Pervez Musharraf (right). [Source: CBC] (click image to enlarge) After CIA Director George Tenet visits Pakistan and pressures the Pakistani government to take stronger action against the charity front Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) (see Early October-December 2001), the CIA learns more about the organization. The CIA was previously aware that the two prominent nuclear scientists who co-founded UTN, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudiri Abdul Majeed, had met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and advised them on how to make a nuclear weapon (see Mid-August 2001). However, the CIA discovers that other nuclear scientists are also connected to UTN, including Mirza Yusef Beg, a former member of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), and Humayun Niaz, also formerly with the PAEC. At least two senior Pakistani military officers are also connected to UTN. All these men are brought in and questioned by US officials. But the CIA is unable to question two others connected to UTN, Muhammad Ali Mukhtar, a nuclear physicist who worked for the PAEC as a weapons expert, and Suleiman Asad, who worked at A. Q. Khan’s Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) in its weapons design division. The CIA reasons that these two scientists would be the type of nuclear bomb makers bin Laden was most interested in. However, the Pakistani government claims that the two are in Burma working on a top secret project and cannot be brought back to Pakistan for questioning. [LEVY AND SCOTT-CLARK, 2007, PP. 320-321] Shortly after 9/11, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf called one of the leaders of Burma and asked if the two scientists could be given asylum there. [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/9/2001] The CIA is also interested in talking to Hamid Gul, a former ISI director and UTN’s honorary patron, but Pakistan will not allow him to be questioned either, even though he had met with Mahmood in Afghanistan around the time Mahmood met with bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. As a result, the CIA is unable to learn just how much UTN could have assisted al-Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction. [LEVY AND SCOTT-CLARK, 2007, PP. 320-321] Entity Tags: Suleiman Asad, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, Pervez Musharraf, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Mullah Omar, Humayun Niaz, Hamid Gul, Chaudiri Abdul Majeed, Central Intelligence Agency, Muhammad Ali Mukhtar, Osama bin Laden, Kahuta Research Laboratories, Mirza Yusef Beg Timeline Tags: A. Q. Khan's Nuclear Network Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Pakistani Nukes & Islamic Militancy

December 2001: FBI Monitors 7/7 London Bomber while He Visits US In December 2001, Germaine Lindsay, one of the suicide bombers in the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), travels to the US to visit his mother in Cleveland, Ohio. He is allegedly monitored by the FBI after spending a month-long holiday with her. It is unknown what causes the surveillance. He is just graduating from high school around this year. [DAILY MAIL, 7/24/2005] Lindsay will also allegedly come to the US in 2002 or 2003 and make contacts in New Jersey and Ohio, but details are sketchy. [ABC NEWS, 7/15/2005] US intelligence is also given his name by British officials at some point in 2004 after his name comes up in the course of an investigation into a fertilizer bomb plot in Britain early that year (see 2004). At some point, the US places him on a terrorist watch list at the request of Britain. A US official will later say, “He was on the radar, then he was off the radar.” [DAILY MAIL, 7/16/2005] Shortly after the 7/7 bombings, British authorities will deny they had heard of Lindsay prior to the bombings, but in early 2006 Newsweek will report that they “now concede they may have.” [NEWSWEEK, 2/5/2006] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Germaine Lindsay Category Tags: 2005 7/7 London Bombings, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

December 2001: Scientific Journal Describes ‘Eutectic Mixture’ in WTC Steel

A sample of WTC steel eroded and corroded due to eutectic formations. [Source: FEMA] The Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (JOM) reports that the examination of a beam from the remains of WTC Building 7—which collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11 (see (5:20 p.m.) September 11, 2001)—has revealed “unexpected erosion” of the steel. The article states: “The formation of the eutectic mixture of iron oxide and iron sulfide lowers the temperature at which liquid can form in this steel. This strongly suggests that the temperatures in this region of the steel beam approached around 1,000°C, forming the eutectic liquid by a process similar to making a ‘blacksmith’s weld’ in a hand forge.” [BARNETT, BIEDERMAN, AND SISSON, 12/2001] The New York Times will call this “perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 2/2/2002] FEMA’s World Trade Center Building Performance Study, released in May 2002 (see May 1, 2002), will add that the same “unusual erosion patterns” have been observed in a sample of the remaining structural steel from one of the Twin Towers. It will state, “This sulfur-rich liquid penetrated preferentially down grain boundaries of the steel, severely weakening the beam and making it susceptible to erosion.” FEMA is unable to explain this phenomenon, saying, “The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion… are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified.… It is possible that this is the result of long-term heating in the ground following the collapse of the buildings. It is also possible that the phenomenon started prior to collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure.” [FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, 5/1/2002, PP. C-1 - C-13] Despite FEMA’s call for further research, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will make no mention of the eutectic formations in its final report into the WTC collapses, released in late 2005, following its three-year investigation. [NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, 9/2005, PP. 13 ] Entity Tags: National Institute of Standards and Technology, World Trade Center, Federal Emergency Management Agency Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: WTC Investigation

Late 2001-Early 2002: Rumsfeld Creates Ultra-Secret Program to Kill, Capture, and/or Interrogate ‘High Value’ Terrorists Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorizes the creation of a “special-access program,” or SAP, with “blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate ‘high value’ targets in the Bush administration’s war on terror.” The operation, known as “Copper Green,” is approved by Condoleezza Rice and known to President Bush. A SAP is an ultra secret project, the contents of which are known by very few officials. “We’re not going to read more people than necessary into our heart of darkness,” a former senior intelligence official tells investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. The SAP is brought up occasionally within the National Security Council (NSC), chaired by the president and members of which are Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Powell. The former intelligence official tells Hersh, “There was a periodic briefing to the National Security Council giving updates on results, but not on the methods.” He also says he believes NSC members know about the process by which these results are acquired. This official claims that fewer than two hundred operatives and officials, including Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers were “completely read into the program.” Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone is generally in charge of running such operations. Motive for the SAP comes from an initial freeze in the results obtained by US agents from their hunt for al-Qaeda. Friendly foreign intelligence services on the other hand, from countries in the Middle East and South-East Asia, which employ more aggressive tactics on prisoners, are giving up much better information by the end of 2001. By authorizing the SAP, Rumsfeld, according to Hersh, desires to adopt these tactics and thus increase intelligence results. “Rumsfeld’s goal was to get a capability in place to take on a high-value target—a stand-up group to hit quickly,” the former intelligence official tells Hersh. The program’s operatives were recruited from among Delta Force, Navy Seals, and CIA’s paramilitary experts. They are permitted to carry out “instant interrogations—using force if necessary—at secret CIA detention centers scattered around the world.” Information obtained through the program is sent to the Pentagon in real-time. The former intelligence official tells Hersh: “The rules are ‘Grab whom you must. Do what you want.’” The operation, according to Seymour Hersh, “encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation.” [NEW YORKER, 5/24/2004; GUARDIAN, 9/13/2004] Both the Defense Department and CIA deny the existence of Copper Green. One Pentagon spokesman says of Hersh’s article about it, “This is the most hysterical piece of journalist malpractice I have ever observed.” [CNN, 5/17/2004] Entity Tags: Stephen A. Cambone, Richard B. Myers, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Operation Copper Green Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

December 2001: Zammar Taken to Syria for Torture and Interrogation With help from the US, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a German and Syrian citizen suspected of being a top al-Qaeda member, is taken in secret to Syria. He had been arrested while visiting Morocco (see October 27-November 2001). When the German government learns of the arrest and transfer, it strongly protests the move. After his arrival in Syria, according to a former fellow prisoner, Zammar is tortured in the Far’ Falastin, or “Palestine Branch,” detention center in Damascus. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 6/20/2002; WASHINGTON POST, 12/26/2002; HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, 6/2004] The center is run by military intelligence and reportedly is a place “where many prisoners remain held incommunicado.” [WASHINGTON POST, 1/31/2003] His Syrian interrogators are reportedly provided with questions from their US counterparts. [HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, 6/2004] This is alleged by Murhaf Jouejati, Adjunct Professor at George Washington University, who tells the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that, “Although US officials have not been able to interrogate Zammar, Americans have submitted questions to the Syrians.” [911 COMMISSION, 7/9/2003] In the “Palestine Branch” prison, Zammar is locked up in cell number thirteen. According to Amnesty International, the cell measures 185 cm long, 90 cm wide and less than two meters high. Zammar is said to be about six feet tall and now “skeletal” in appearance. [AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, 10/8/2004] Entity Tags: Mohammed Haydar Zammar Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Germany, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

December 2001: CIA Realizes Prague Visit Was Not Made by Hijacker Atta The CIA realizes that a reported visit by Mohamed Atta to Prague, Czech Republic, was actually made by a Pakistani businessman with a similar name (see May 31, 2000), not by the 9/11 hijacker. Hijacker Atta’s alleged Prague visit was used to bolster the theory that he met an Iraqi intelligence agent there in April 2001 (see September 14, 2001), and that Iraq was connected to 9/11. The Pakistani arrived on May 31, 2000 and was deported, as he did not have a Czech visa. Hijacker Atta arrived two days later on his way to the US on a Czech visa that came into effect on June 1. Shortly after 9/11, it was thought that Atta’s business in Prague in May 2000 was so urgent that he had to fly into the airport and be deported one day before his visa came into effect (note: the theory was that he must have met someone at the airport while waiting for his deportation flight). However, investigation by the CIA, Czech and German authorities finds that the May 30 entry was made by a namesake, not the hijacker. [CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 8/29/2004] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Mohamed Atta Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Mohamed Atta

December 2001: US Citizen Captured in Afghanistan, Declared to Be ‘Enemy Combatant’

Yaser Esam Hamdi in Afghanistan shortly after being captured there. [Source: Virginian Pilot] Yaser Esam Hamdi, who holds dual Saudi and US citizenship, is captured in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance and handed over to US forces. According to the US government, at the time of his arrest, Hamdi carries a Kalashnikov assault rifle and is traveling with a Taliban military unit. The following month he will be transferred to Guantanamo. In April 2002, it will be discovered he is a US citizen. He will be officially be declared an “enemy combatant” and transferred to a Navy brig in Norfolk, Virginia (see April 2002). [CNN, 10/14/2004] Entity Tags: Yaser Esam Hamdi Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Afghanistan

Between December 2001 and February 2002: Manager at FAA’s New York Center Destroys Tape of Controller’s 9/11 Accounts A manager at the FAA’s New York Center deliberately destroys an audio tape that was made on September 11, on which several of the center’s air traffic controllers recounted their interactions with the hijacked aircraft. [NEW YORK TIMES, 5/6/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 5/7/2004] Within hours of the 9/11 attacks, Kevin Delaney, the New York Center’s quality assurance manager, was instructed to make the tape recording, on which six controllers at the center involved in handling or tracking two of the hijacked aircraft recalled their experiences of what happened (see 11:40 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 COMMISSION, 10/1/2003 ; WASHINGTON POST, 5/6/2004; AIR SAFETY WEEK, 5/17/2004] Crushes Cassette, Cuts Tape into Small Pieces - But a few months later, some time between December 2001 and February 2002, Delaney destroys the tape. He will later recall that he does so by “crushing the cassette case in his hand, cutting the tape into small pieces, and depositing the pieces in trash cans throughout the center.” A Department of Transportation (DOT) report in 2004 will point out, “It is clear [Delaney] went to great lengths to destroy the tape so that it would never leave the center intact.” Superiors Not Consulted - Delaney disposes of the tape of his own volition, and without consulting his superiors. However, Mike McCormick, the New York Center manager, will later say that, had Delaney asked for his permission to destroy the tape, he would have given it, since he viewed the tape as only a temporary record. Two Reasons for Destroying Tape - Delaney will later tell DOT investigators that he destroys the tape for two reasons. Firstly, he considers the creation of the tape to have been contrary to FAA policy for aircraft accidents and incidents, which requires that handwritten statements be made after controllers are able to review certain materials, such as radio transmissions and radar data. (The DOT investigators will dispute this conclusion (see May 6, 2004).) He therefore feels the tape is of limited value relative to the controllers’ written statements (see (Between September 11 and October 2, 2001)). Secondly, Delaney feels the controllers were distressed on 9/11, and therefore not in the correct frame of mind to properly consent to the taping. He bases this assessment partly on what he has seen on television crime shows, about due process and legal rights associated with investigations. But the 2004 DOT report will state, “Under FAA policy, and as supported by air traffic policy experts at FAA headquarters, the tape should have been considered an original record and retained for five years.” A former criminal investigator will comment, “Ray Charles [the blind musician] could see that this was a cover-up.” Others Not Notified - Delaney destroys the tape without anyone having listened to, copied, or transcribed it. He will not inform the New York Center’s management that he has destroyed the tape until he is asked about it in September 2003, following inquiries by the 9/11 Commission. Materials the New York Center prepares for submission to the Commission will even include a chain-of-custody index that mistakenly indicates the tape still exists. And prior to an investigation by the DOT’s Office of Inspector General in late 2003 and early 2004, apparently no one outside the New York Center will be aware of the existence of the tape, or of its destruction. Union Told Tape Would Be Destroyed - Delaney previously assured the local vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) that he would “get rid of” the tape once the center’s formal accident package had been completed (see October 2001-February 2002). (This package has now been submitted to FAA headquarters (see November 2001-May 2002).) But Delaney will tell DOT investigators that he did not feel under any pressure from NATCA to destroy the tape. McCormick made a similar agreement with the local NATCA president, that the tape would be destroyed after written statements had been obtained from the controllers (see (Shortly Before 11:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001), but Delaney is unaware of this. No Regrets - Delaney apparently has no subsequent regrets about destroying the tape. He will later say that, under similar circumstances, he would again follow the same course of action. [US DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, 5/4/2004 ; AIR SAFETY WEEK, 5/17/2004] Entity Tags: Kevin Delaney, Mike McCormick Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations

December 2001: Ansar Al-Islam Militant Group Formed The militant group Ansar al-Islam is formed in Iraq. It is created from a merger of two Kurdish rebel groups and it is led by Mullah Krekar, who spends most of his time living in exile in Norway. Ansar al-Islam preaches a radical interpretation of Islam. It controls a small area of only about a dozen villages in a mountainous region right next to Iraq’s border with Iran. [BBC, 3/22/2003] The US will later accuse the group of hosting militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and many al-Qaeda operatives. Entity Tags: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Ansar al-Islam, Mullah Krekar Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links

December 2001: Al-Qaeda-Linked Figures and Indonesian Military Attack Christian Villages on Island of Sulawesi

Agus Dwikarna. [Source: Christian Science Monitor] In October 2000, Agus Dwikarna, an Indonesian militant linked to al-Qaeda, helps establish the paramilitary organization Laskar Jundullah. It is modeled after Laskar Jihad, another paramilitary organization formed earlier (see January 1999-July 2001), except Laskar Jihad draws its recruits from the Indonesian island of Java whereas Laskar Jundullah draws its recruits from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Laskar Jundullah gathers about 2,000 recruits to central Sulawesi. Mostly using bats and machetes, they support local Muslims in violent conflicts with Christians near the town of Poso, which have been occurring off and on since 1998, with heavy casualties on both sides. [HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, 12/2002; CONBOY, 2003, PP. 223-224] In the second half of 2001, some al-Qaeda linked figures begin helping Dwikarna and Laskar Jundullah:

Omar al-Faruq, a Kuwaiti, who is said to be a key go-between for al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah. Al-Faruq and Dwikarna hosted al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri when he visited Indonesia in 2000 (see June 2000). 
Syeh Hussein, a.k.a. Rashid, a Saudi. He is al-Faruq’s handler and is said to have access to Osama bin Laden. He is posing as a representative of the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation. Dwikarna is also posing as an Al Haramain employee (see June 2000). [CONBOY, 2003, PP. 223-224] 
Reda Seyam, a.k.a. Abu Daud, an Egyptian. He had fought with al-Qaeda in Bosnia in the early 1990s and also has links to key al-Qaeda figures, including having met directly with bin Laden. He had worked for the Twaik Group, said to be a front for the Saudi intelligence agency, and is in Indonesia working for Rawasin Media Productions, which is also said to be a Saudi intelligence front. [CONBOY, 2003, PP. 223-224; CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 3/31/2004] 

On December 1, 2001, al-Faruq, Hussein, and Seyam meet with fifty Laskar Jundullah recruits near the town of Poso, in central Sulawesi. They present the recruits with weapons, including high quality M-16s and Uzis (which are very unavailable in Indonesia except from military or overseas sources). Near midnight, the group goes to Sepe, a small Christian village near Poso. They attack the village, burning about two hundred houses and killing an unknown number of people. The attack is filmed using night vision equipment. [CONBOY, 2003, PP. 223-224] There are allegations that some Indonesian military units take part in the attack. Since 90% of Indonesia’s population is Muslim, most Indonesian soldiers are Muslim as well. Human Rights Watch will later comment, “there is evidence that [Indonesian] soldiers did engage the attackers in a fight [at Sepe], as three soldiers from Infantry Battalion 711 from Palu were reported in critical condition.” Around this time, Laskar Jundullah forces attack about seven other Christian villages in the region. There are reports the Indonesian military sometimes joins these attacks and at other times fails to help the attacked villages. These attacks are little noticed outside of Indonesia, and the involvement of al-Qaeda-linked figures will not be publicly revealed until later. But there is pressure within Indonesia for the government to do something. More military units are bought in several days after the Sepe attack, and they largely quell the violence. [HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, 12/2002] Around December 4, six suspicious foreign men, believed to be Islamist militants, are detained in the area and then let go. [BBC, 12/4/2001] Later that month, Laskar Jundullah is implicated in a bombing of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the city of Ujung Pandang, in southern Sulawesi. The group plans further attacks, but it is divided by internal squabbles. Dwikarna, who was not present in the Sepe attack, is upset at the others for recklessly filming themselves in the attack and then planning to use the footage for propaganda purposes. Seyam will be arrested in Indonesia late 2002 and footage of the Sepe attack apparently will be found with him. Dwikarna will be arrested in 2002 as well. His group, and the violence in Sulawesi, will generally come to an end that same year. [HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, 12/2002; CONBOY, 2003, PP. 223-224] Entity Tags: Laskar Jundullah, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, Twaik Group, Agus Dwikarna, Reda Seyam, Omar al-Faruq, Syeh Hussein, Al-Qaeda, Rawasin Media Productions Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia, Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia, Indonesian Militant Collusion, Alleged Al-Qaeda Linked Attacks

December 2001: Possible ‘20th Hijacker’ Captured, Given to US Saudi national Mohamed al-Khatani is captured at the Pakistani-Afghan border and transferred to US authorities. [WASHINGTON FILE, 6/23/2004] He tells his captors that he was in Afghanistan to pursue his love of falconry, an explanation no one takes seriously. [TIME, 6/12/2005] His identity and nationality are at this time unknown. However, investigators will later come to believe he was an intended twentieth hijacker for the 9/11 plot (see July 2002). Entity Tags: Mohamed al-Khatani Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Key Captures and Deaths, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Afghanistan

December 2001: Al-Qaeda Computer Provides Intimate Look at Terror Operations Alan Cullison, a Wall Street Journal reporter in Afghanistan, obtains two computers looted from an al-Qaeda house in Kabul. One computer apparently belonged to al-Qaeda military commander Mohammed Atef but contained few files. The other had been used mostly by al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Al-Zawahiri and had about 1,000 files dating back to 1997. The reporter later gives the computers to the CIA which confirms the authenticity of the files. The computer files reveal how al-Qaeda operates on a day-to-day basis. The files include correspondence, budgets, attack plans, and training manuals. Messages between various al-Qaeda’s offices reveal a fractious, contentious community of terror plotters. There are disputes about theology, strategy, and even expense reports. A montage of 9/11 television reports set to rousing victory reports shows that the computer was used after the attacks. While some of the new information is surprising, for the most part it confirms the claims made about al-Qaeda by Western governments. A letter drafted on the computer in May 2001 confirms that al-Qaeda was behind the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud (see September 9, 2001). Other messages shows that the organization orchestrated the 1998 embassy bombings (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). However, there is no material relating specifically to the plotting of the 9/11 attacks. [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 12/31/2001; ATLANTIC MONTHLY, 9/2004] Entity Tags: Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda Category Tags: Afghanistan, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

December, 2001: US Congress Fails to Fund Plan to Strengthen Pakistani Government Control over Tribal Region Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf meets with Wendy Chamberlin, the US ambassador to Pakistan, and asks for US support to help him extend his control over the tribal areas near the Afghanistan border. At the time, al-Qaeda and Taliban forces are being defeated in Afghanistan and fleeing to the tribal region. Musharraf suggests the local people can be bought off with basic government services such as schools, clinics, and roads, and that large cash rewards could be offered to locals who help track down fugitive militants. Musharraf claims he would need $40 million to implement such a plan. Chamberlin agrees, but Congress soon refuses to fund the money, and only gives $14 million for local law enforcement. Charlie Flickner, a Republican clerk on the House Appropriations Committee, successfully lobbies his Republican colleagues not to support it. One anonymous Democrat on the committee will later say: “We blew it. There was a window of opportunity, but we lost it by not funding them adequately.” The tribal areas soon become a strong base for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. [NEW YORKER, 7/28/2003] Entity Tags: Wendy Chamberlin, Al-Qaeda, Charlie Flickner, Taliban, Pervez Musharraf Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region

December 2001-June 2002: Spanish Begin Monitoring Many Future Madrid Bombers In early September 2001, an Egyptian militant named Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed moves from Germany to Spain. By December, Spanish officials open an investigation about him after noticing he is in frequent contact with other Islamist militants. One month later, Spanish investigators notify German officials that they have Ahmed under surveillance and request information about his background. Ahmed apparently is aware he is under surveillance and tries to keep a low profile. [WASHINGTON POST, 11/14/2004] But through him, investigators led by judge Baltasar Garzon begin monitoring other militants he meets. In May 2002, they start tapping the phones of Fouad el Morabit and Basel Ghalyoun. In June, they realize Ahmed is in contact with Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, who has already been under surveillance since 2000 (see October 19, 2001). They also learn at some point that he is in contact with the brothers Moutaz and Mouhannad Almallah. Investigators lose track of el Morabit a near the end of 2002 when he changes phones. They also lose track of Ghalyoun aroun the same time because his conversations apparently are not interesting enough. Ahmed also moves to France. [EL MUNDO (MADRID), 7/31/2005] However, in early 2003, investigators begin monitoring an apartment where all the suspects mentioned live or meet (see January 4, 2003). All of them will later be accused of being key players in the 2004 Madrid train bombings (see 7:37-7:42 a.m., March 11, 2004). Entity Tags: Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, Serhane Abdelmajid Fakhet, Mouhannad Almallah, Basel Ghalyoun, Baltasar Garzon, Fouad el Morabit, Moutaz Almallah Category Tags: Al-Qaeda in Spain, 2004 Madrid Train Bombings, Remote Surveillance

December 2001-Mid-2002: Al-Zarqawi Moves Operations to Northern Iraq but Has No Ties to Hussein’s Government Jordanian Islamist militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi flees Afghanistan (see Early 2000-December 2001) and heads to Iran where he continues to run his militant group, al-Tawhid. He uses telephones and a network of couriers to maintain contact with operatives in Europe. By April 2002, he still is based in Iran and has little to no ties to Iraq. But some time in mid-2002, he unites with Ansar al-Islam, an Islamist group based in a part of northern Iraq controlled by Kurdish rebels and opposed to Saddam Hussein (see Mid-2002). He reportedly moves his base of operations there and establishes an explosive training center camp there as well. [INDEPENDENT, 2/6/2003; NEWSWEEK, 6/25/2003] In an effort to justify military action against Iraq, the Bush administration will later claim that Saddam Hussein is aware of al-Zarqawi’s presence in Baghdad and therefore is guilty of knowingly harboring a terrorist (see September 26, 2002). The administration will also allege—falsely—that al-Zarqawi is a senior al-Qaeda agent and that his visit is evidence that Saddam’s regime has ties to Osama bin Laden. [GUARDIAN, 10/9/2002; INDEPENDENT, 2/6/2003; NEWSWEEK, 6/25/2003 SOURCES: SHADI ABDALLAH] But the administration never offers any conclusive evidence to support this allegation. The claim is disputed by intelligence analysts in both Washington and London. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 2/4/2003] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links

December 2001 and After: Drug Kingpin Let Go by US; Then Rebuilds Drug Network for Taliban and Al-Qaeda Afghan drug kingpin Haji Juma Khan (see July 2000) is arrested and taken into US custody. Although his role in the illegal drug trade is known to US officials, he is let go. A European counterterrorism expert says, “At the time, the Americans were only interested in catching bin Laden and Mullah Omar.” Another major kingpin is arrested and released around this time as well (see Late 2001). After being released, Khan reestablishes a smuggling network that greatly benefits the Taliban and al-Qaeda. For instance, in May 2004, a tip off will reveal that Khan is employing a fleet of cargo ships to move Afghan heroin out of Pakistan to the Middle East. Some return trips bring back plastic explosives, antitank mines, and other weapons to be used against US troops in Afghanistan. In 2004, Assistant Secretary of State Bobby Charles says of Khan, “He’s obviously very tightly tied to the Taliban.… There are central linkages among Khan, Mullah Omar, and bin Laden.” [TIME, 8/2/2004] In 2006, a report by the research arm of Congress will label Khan as one of three prominent drug kingpins with ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but he apparently has not yet been put on the official US list of wanted drug figures. [CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE, 1/25/2006] Entity Tags: Haji Juma Khan, Robert Charles, Taliban, Al-Qaeda Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Drugs, Afghanistan

Early December 2001: Bush Officials Again Look for Saudi Cooperation Bush administration officials go to Saudi Arabia in a second attempt to obtain Saudi government cooperation in the 9/11 investigation. The Saudis have balked at freezing assets of organizations linked to bin Laden. Shortly thereafter, the Boston Herald runs a series of articles on the Saudis, citing an expert who says, “If there weren’t all these other arrangements—arms deals and oil deals and consultancies—I don’t think the US would stand for this lack of cooperation.” Another expert states that “it’s good old fashioned ‘I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine.’ You have former US officials, former presidents, aides to the current president, a long line of people who are tight with the Saudis.… We are willing to basically ignore inconvenient truths that might otherwise cause our blood to boil.” These deals are worth an incredible amount of money; one Washington Post reporter claims that prior to 1993, US companies spent $200 billion on Saudi Arabia’s defenses alone. [PBS, 2/16/1993; BOSTON HERALD, 12/10/2001; BOSTON HERALD, 12/11/2001] Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Bush administration, Saudi Arabia Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Saudi Arabia, Other 9/11 Investigations, Terrorism Financing, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

Early December 2001: FBI Wiretaps Reveal that Turkish Groups Attempted to Bribe Congress Persons in Late 1990s Chicago FBI special agent Joel Robertz contacts FBI contract linguist Sibel Edmonds and asks her to review more than 40 wiretaps, some of which are several years old. The wiretaps include what Sibel believes are references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes. The targets of these recordings are individuals at Chicago’s Turkish Consulate and the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. She also finds evidence of attempts to bribe members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, during the late 1990s (see Late 1990s-Early 2001). [ANTI-WAR (.COM), 8/15/2005; VANITY FAIR, 9/2005] Entity Tags: Sibel Edmonds, Assembly of Turkish American Associations, American-Turkish Council, Turkish Consulate of Chicago, Joel Robertz, American-Turkish Consulate Category Tags: Sibel Edmonds

Early December 2001: CIA Again Warns Bush ‘Back Door Is Open’ for Bin Laden to Escape Tora Bora

Radios, weapons, and simple supplies in a Tora Bora cave allegedly occupied by al-Qaeda forces. [Source: Confidential source via Robin Moore] According to author Ron Suskind, the CIA continues to press President Bush to send US troops to surround the caves in Tora Bora where bin Laden is believed to be hiding. It is about a 15 square-mile area. The CIA issued similar warnings a few weeks earlier (see Late November 2001). Suskind relates: “A fierce debate was raging inside the upper reaches of the US government. The White House had received a guarantee from [Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf in November that the Pakistani army would cover the southern pass from the caves (see November 2001). Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld felt the Pakistani leader’s assurance was sound. Classified CIA reports passed to Bush in his morning briefings of early December, however, warned that ‘the back door is open’ and that a bare few Pakistani army units were visible gathering near the Pakistani border.… Musharraf, when pressed by the White House, said troop movements were slow, but not to worry-they were on their way.” [SUSKIND, 2006, PP. 74] But again, no US troops are sent, and Pakistani troops fail to arrive in time. Bin Laden eventually will escape into Pakistan (see Mid-December 2001). Entity Tags: Pervez Musharraf, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

Early December 2001: Al-Qaeda ‘Puppet Master’ Abu Qatada Disappears in Britain

Abu Qatada. [Source: Public domain] Al-Qaeda religious leader Abu Qatada disappears, despite being under surveillance in Britain. He has been “described by some justice officials as the spiritual leader and possible puppet master of al-Qaeda’s European networks.” [TIME, 7/7/2002] He supposedly escapes from his house, which the police are monitoring, in a minivan with his heavily pregnant wife and four children. [LONDON TIMES, 10/25/2002; O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 108] Qatada had already been sentenced to death in abstentia in Jordan, and is wanted at the time by the US, Spain, France, and Algeria as well. [GUARDIAN, 2/14/2002] In October 2001, the media had strongly suggested that Qatada would soon be arrested for his known roles in al-Qaeda plots, but no such arrest occurred. [LONDON TIMES, 10/21/2001] In November, while Qatada was still living openly in Britain, a Spanish judge expressed disbelief that Qatada hadn’t been arrested already, as he has previously been connected to a Spanish al-Qaeda cell that may have met with Mohamed Atta in July 2001. [OBSERVER, 11/25/2001] Time magazine will later claim that just before new anti-terrorism laws go into effect in Britain, Abu Qatada and his family are secretly moved to a safe house by the British government, where he is lodged, fed, and clothed by the government. “The deal is that Abu Qatada is deprived of contact with extremists in London and Europe but can’t be arrested or expelled because no one officially knows where he is,” says a source, whose claims were corroborated by French authorities. The British reportedly do this to avoid a “hot potato” trial. [TIME, 7/7/2002] A British official rejects these assertions: “We wouldn’t give an awful lot of credence [to the story].” [GUARDIAN, 7/8/2002] Some French officials tell the press that Qatada was allowed to disappear because he is actually a British intelligence agent. [OBSERVER, 2/24/2002] It appears that Qatada held secret meetings with British intelligence in 1996 and 1997, and the British were under the impression that he was informing on al-Qaeda (though there is disagreement if he was misleading them or not) (see June 1996-February 1997). Qatada will be arrested in London on October 23, 2002 (see October 23, 2002). Entity Tags: Algeria, Al-Qaeda, Abu Qatada, United Kingdom, Mohamed Atta, Central Intelligence Agency, Jordan, France, Spain Category Tags: Abu Qatada, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

Early December 2001: More Journalists than US Troops at Tora Bora

Groups of reporters watch US bombing in the Tora Bora region. [Source: CNN] Only about three dozen US soldiers take part in the Tora Bora ground offensive (see December 5-17, 2001). Author Peter Bergen will later comment, “If Fox and CNN could arrange for their crews to cover Tora Bora it is puzzling that the US military could not put more boots on the ground to find the man who was the intellectual author of the 9/11 attacks. Sadly, there were probably more American journalists at the battle of Tora Bora than there were US troops.” [PETERBERGEN (.COM), 10/28/2004] Entity Tags: Peter Bergen Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

December 2, 2001: FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Invited by Co-Worker to Become Member of Group that Is Under Federal Investigation

Matthew Edmonds sitting in the kitchen where he and his wife Sibel claim their encounter with the Dickersons took place. [Source: Canal+] FBI translator Sibel Edmonds receives a call from co-worker Melek Can Dickerson, whom she barely knows. Dickerson says she and her husband Major Douglas Dickerson are in the area and would like to stop by for a visit. [VANITY FAIR, 9/2005] Douglas is a US Air Force major who procures weapons from the US for various Central Asian and Middle Eastern governments. [ANTI-WAR (.COM), 8/15/2005] “I’m in the area with my husband and I’d love you to meet him. Is it OK if we come by?” Edmonds recalls Dickerson saying. When the couple arrives, Douglas Dickerson encourages Edmonds and her husband Matthew Edmonds to join the American-Turkish Council (ATC) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA). Joining the organizations would get them tied in with a network of high-level people, including officials at the Turkish Embassy. When Sibel’s husband Michael suggests that there are probably strict eligibility requirements for becoming a member of this organization, Douglas says to Sibel, “All you have to do is tell them who you work for and what you do and you will get in very quickly.” Sibel attempts to steer the conversation toward another topic. As part of her job at the FBI, some of the wiretapped conversations she translates involve the very same people the Dickersons are describing as “high-level friends.” She is concerned that the ultimate goal of the Dickersons’ offer is to get Sibel involved in espionage and to help shield those groups from FBI surveillance. [WASHINGTON POST, 6/19/2002; CBS NEWS, 10/25/2002; NEW YORK OBSERVER, 1/22/2004; VANITY FAIR, 9/2005] Major Dickerson brings up the name of a wealthy Turkish man living in nearby McLean, Virginia, who is involved with the ATC and has access to US military information. Sibel Edmonds is surprised because she recognizes his name from an investigation she is working on and knows that he is the target of an FBI counterintelligence operation. The Dickersons intimate that they are so close to this man that they shop for him and his wife. [SPERRY, 2005, PP. 163] “They wanted to sell me for the information I could provide,” she later explains in an interview. They promised her she would receive enough to “live a very comfortable life wherever we wanted. We would never have to work again.” [ANTI-WAR (.COM), 7/1/2004] Entity Tags: Matthew Edmonds, Douglas Dickerson, Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Melek Can Dickerson, Sibel Edmonds, American-Turkish Council Category Tags: Sibel Edmonds

December 2, 2001: Enron Files for Bankruptcy

Enron’s logo. [Source: Enron] Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy—the biggest bankruptcy in history up to that date. [BBC, 1/10/2002] However, in 2002 Enron will reorganize as a pipeline company and will continue working on its controversial Dabhol power plant. [HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL, 3/15/2002] Entity Tags: Enron Timeline Tags: Bush's Environmental Record Category Tags: Pipeline Politics

December 3-14, 2001: Bush Administration Officials Tip Off Reporters About Raids on Suspect Charities On December 3, 2001, New York Times reporter Judith Miller telephones officials with the Holy Land Foundation charity in Texas and asks them to comment about what she says is a government raid on the charity planned for the next day. Then in a December 4, 2001, New York Times article, Miller writes that President Bush is about to announce that the US is freezing the assets of Holy Land and two other financial groups, all for supporting Hamas. US officials will later argue that Miller’s phone call and article “increased the likelihood that the foundation destroyed or hid records before a hastily organized raid by agents that day.” Later in the month, a similar incident occurs. On December 13, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon telephones officials at the Global Relief Foundation in Illinois and asks them to comment about an imminent government crackdown on that charity. The FBI learns that some Global Relief employees may be destroying documents. US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald had been investigating the charities. He had been wiretapping Global Relief and another charity in hopes of learning evidence of criminal activity, but after the leak he changes plans and carries out a hastily arranged raid on the charity the next day (see December 14, 2001). Fitzgerald later seeks records from the New York Times to find out who in the Bush administration leaked information about the upcoming raids to Miller and Shenon. However, in 2005 Fitzgerald will lose the case. It is still not known who leaked the information to the New York Times nor what their motives were. Ironically, Fitzgerald will succeed in forcing Miller to reveal information about her sources in another extremely similar legal case in 2005 involving the leaking of the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/4/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 12/15/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 9/10/2004; WASHINGTON POST, 2/25/2005] The 9/11 Commission will later conclude that in addition to the above cases, “press leaks plagued almost every [raid on Muslim charities] that took place in the United States” after 9/11. [WASHINGTON POST, 9/10/2004] Entity Tags: Philip Shenon, Patrick Fitzgerald, Judith Miller, Hamas, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Federal Bureau of Investigation, George W. Bush, Global Relief Foundation, Bush administration Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Robert Wright and Vulgar Betrayal, Terrorism Financing, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

December 4, 2001: Holy Land Foundation Shut Down The Holy Land Foundation is shut down and its assets are seized. Holy Land claimed to be the largest Muslim charity in the US. It claimed to raise millions for Palestinian refugees and denied any support for terrorism. In justifying the move, the US government presents evidence of ties between the Holy Land and Hamas. Much of this evidence dates back to 1993; the Associated Press titles a story on the closure, “Money Freeze A Long Time Coming.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/5/2001] Holy Land offices in San Diego, California; Paterson, New Jersey; and Bridgeview, Illinois, are also raided. [CNN, 12/4/2001] The indictment says Holy Land has been “deeply involved with a network of Muslim Brotherhood organizations dedicated to furthering the Islamic fundamentalist agenda espoused by Hamas.” [WASHINGTON POST, 9/11/2004] Holy Land is represented by the powerful law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. Three partners at Akin, Gump are very close to President Bush: George Salem chaired Bush’s 2000 campaign outreach to Arab-Americans; Barnett “Sandy” Kress was appointed by Bush as an “unpaid consultant” on education reform and has an office in the White House; and James Langdon is one of Bush’s closest Texas friends. [BOSTON HERALD, 12/11/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 12/17/2001] The leaders of Holy Land will be charged with a variety of crimes in 2002 and 2004 (see December 18, 2002-April 2005). Entity Tags: Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, US Department of the Treasury, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development Category Tags: Robert Wright and Vulgar Betrayal, Terrorism Financing, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

December 4, 2001: FBI Translator Informs Supervisor that Co-Worker Is Shielding Targets of Investigation from Surveillance FBI contract linguist Sibel Edmonds informs supervisor Mike Feghali—first orally and later in writing—about her recent encounter with the Dickersons on September 2 (see December 2, 2001) and describes their self-acknowledged links to the American-Turkish Council (ATC), the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), and certain high-level Turkish Embassy officials, all of which are targets of FBI wiretaps. Edmonds also alleges, either on this day or some time afterwards, that Dickerson has also leaked information to people under investigation and that she has even tried to stop Edmonds and another translator from listening to their wiretapped conversations. [PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI. SIBEL EDMONDS V. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, ET ALL., 8/4/2005, PP. 2 ; GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE, 8/8/2005; VANITY FAIR, 9/2005] Feghali tells her not to worry and that he will immediately file a report with the security department. [ANTI-WAR (.COM), 7/1/2004; VANITY FAIR, 9/2005] (The security department later tells Edmonds they received no such report [ANTI-WAR (.COM), 7/1/2004; BOSTON GLOBE, 7/5/2004] .) He then changes the subject. “Now, Sibel, I understand you’ve been taking on a lot of coursework at your university. Why not take advantage of our workplace opportunities?” he asks. When she asks what he means, he explains that she could come to the office on Saturday and Sunday to do her school work on the clock, adding another $700 or so to her weekly earnings. On another occasion, one of her supervisors (possibly Feghali) offers to make her next trip to Turkey “TDY” (paid travel). All she would have to do is “stop off in some liaison office in Ankara a couple times, make my little appearance, and suddenly all my flights, hotels and expenses would be paid for by the FBI,” she recalls in a 2004 interview. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.” [ANTI-WAR (.COM), 7/1/2004] Entity Tags: Douglas Dickerson, Melek Can Dickerson, Mike Feghali, Sibel Edmonds Category Tags: Sibel Edmonds

December 5-17, 2001: Ground Battle for Tora Bora Rages but Is Later Called ‘Grand Charade’

US Special Forces unloading equipment in the Tora Bora region. [Source: Banded Artists Productions] (click image to enlarge) Around December 5, 2001, about three-dozen US special forces position themselves at strategic spots in the Tora Bora region to observe the fighting. Using hand-held laser target designators, they “paint” targets to bomb. Immediately the US bombing becomes more accurate. With this improved system in place, the ground battle for Tora Bora begins in earnest. However, as the Christian Science Monitor later notes, “The battle was joined, but anything approaching a ‘siege’ of Tora Bora never materialized.” No other US troops take part, and US-allied afghans fight unenthusiastically and sometimes even fight for the other side (see Mid-November 2001-Mid-December 2001). [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002] The Tora Bora battle will end with a victory for the US-allied forces by December 17, 2001 (see December 17, 2001). However, the Daily Telegraph will later report, “In retrospect, and with the benefit of dozens of accounts from the participants, the battle for Tora Bora looks more like a grand charade.” Eyewitnesses express shock that the US pinned in Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, thought to contain many high leaders, on three sides only, leaving the route to Pakistan open. An intelligence chief in Afghanistan’s new government says, “The border with Pakistan was the key, but no one paid any attention to it. In addition, there were plenty of landing areas for helicopters had the Americans acted decisively. Al-Qaeda escaped right out from under their feet.” [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 2/23/2002] Entity Tags: Taliban, Al-Qaeda, US Department of Defense, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

December 6, 2001: Ashcroft Prohibits FBI from Checking Gun Purchase Records of 9/11 Suspects It is reported that in the wake of 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft has prevented the FBI from investigating gun-purchase records to discover if any of the hundreds arrested or suspected since 9/11 had bought any guns. The White House supports him, saying they have no intention of changing the law to clarify the FBI’s ability to search gun-purchase records. [CNN, 12/6/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 12/6/2001] A spokesman for The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the largest group of law enforcement executives in the US, says, “This is absurd and unconscionable. The decision has no rational basis in public safety. It sounds to me like it was made for narrow political reasons based on a right-to-bear-arms mentality.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/6/2001] There were reports that the 9/11 hijackers on at least Flight 11 and Flight 93 used guns in the hijacking (see (8:20 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and 9:27 a.m. September 11, 2001). Entity Tags: John Ashcroft, Federal Bureau of Investigation, International Association of Chiefs of Police Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, Internal US Security After 9/11

December 7, 2001: Indian Police Shoot Gangster Dead Indian gangster Asif Raza Khan, an associate of Saeed Sheikh and Aftab Ansari, is shot dead by Indian police. Police claim he was trying to escape. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 1/23/2002] A month or two before his death, Indian investigators recorded a confession of his involvement in a plot with Ansari and Saeed to send kidnapping profits to hijacker Mohamed Atta. This information becomes public just before Saeed is suspected in the kidnapping and murder of reporter Daniel Pearl. [INDEPENDENT, 1/24/2002; INDIA TODAY, 2/25/2002] Many in Ansari’s Indian criminal network are arrested in October and November 2001, and they confirm Khan’s money connection to Atta. [INDIA TODAY, 2/14/2002] Entity Tags: Asif Raza Khan, Daniel Pearl, Saeed Sheikh, Aftab Ansari, Mohamed Atta Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Saeed Sheikh

December 8, 2001: US Oil Companies to Invest $200 Billion in Kazakhstan During a visit to Kazakhstan in Central Asia, Secretary of State Powell states that US oil companies are likely to invest $200 billion in Kazakhstan alone in the next five to ten years. [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/15/2001] Entity Tags: Colin Powell Category Tags: Pipeline Politics, US Dominance

December 8-14, 2001: British Special Forces ‘20 Minutes Behind’ Bin Laden, But Are Called Off British special forces soldiers from the Special Air Service (SAS) and the Special Boat Service (SBS) pursue Osama bin Laden as he flees the battle of Tora Bora (see November 16, 2001 and December 5-17, 2001). According to author Michael Smith, at one point they are “twenty minutes” behind bin Laden, but they are “pulled off to allow US troops to go in for the kill.” However, it takes hours for the Americans to arrive, by which time bin Laden has escaped. [LONDON TIMES, 2/12/2007] Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Special Boat Service, Special Air Service Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Escape From Afghanistan

December 9, 2001: Cheney Claims Atta-Iraqi Agent Meeting in Prague Is ‘Pretty Well Confirmed’ Vice President Cheney says in an interview on Meet the Press, “Well, what we now have that’s developed [recently]… was that report that’s been pretty well confirmed, that [Mohamed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don’t know at this point. But that’s clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.” [WASHINGTON POST, 12/9/2001] The CIA already believes the reports of Atta visiting Prague are incorrect (see December 2001). Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Mohamed Atta Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links

December 9, 2001: CIA’s Bin Laden Unit Boss Becomes New Chief of CIA’s Kabul Station during Tora Bora Battle Richard Blee, a manager at the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center who was responsible for Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, from mid-1999 through 9/11, is made chief of the CIA’s new station in Kabul. Blee replaces Gary Berntsen, who had effectively led the CIA’s war effort against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Berntsen is unhappy with being replaced, saying: “It felt as though someone had just thrown a bucket of cold water in my face. I couldn’t believe they were doing this in the middle of the most important battle of the war.” The battle of Tora Bora begins around this time and, although the US thinks it has Osama bin Laden cornered there, he somehow manages to escape (see November 16, 2001, November 26, 2001 and Early December 2001). Berntsen’s staff are also unhappy with the decision, and slap their hands over their heads and groan when they find out. They tell Berntsen, “No disrespect to Rich, but when you leave, we leave.” Berntsen will attribute Blee’s selection to his closeness to CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Director of Operations James Pavitt, and will also hint that Blee strongly desired the job. [BERNTSEN AND PEZZULLO, 2005, PP. 296-7, 306] Berntsen pushed hard for US troops to be deployed to catch bin Laden (see Late October-Early December 2001), but it is not known whether Blee is in favor of using US troops or not. Blee will also instigate the transfer of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi from the FBI to Egypt shortly after arriving; this is the first such transfer of a major figure after 9/11 (see Shortly After December 19, 2001). Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Rich B., Gary Berntsen Category Tags: Escape From Afghanistan, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

December 10, 2001: Pakistani Troops Start to Guard Parts of Tora Bora Border but Then Withdraw Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had promised to seal off the Pakistani side of the border near the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in return for considerable US economic aid (see November 2001). But Musharraf spent two weeks negotiating with tribal chieftains on the border before starting the deployment. Around December 10, two brigades begin to take up positions along the border. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002; NEWSWEEK, 8/11/2002] However, Pakistan does not seal several important parts of the border. The regions of North and South Waziristan, Dir, Chitral, and Balochistan have no Pakistani army presence whatsoever. Bin Laden and many other al-Qaeda leaders likely escape into Waziristan, where they begin to rebuild al-Qaeda (see December 2001-Spring 2002). The CIA intercepts communications between Pakistani officers warning not to harass any foreign fighters entering Waziristan. Several US officers will later tell Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid that they suspect Pakistan deliberately failed to guard these regions in order to allow the fighters to escape. [RASHID, 2008, PP. 148] On December 11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says of this border region, “It’s a long border. It’s a very complicated area to try to seal, and there’s just simply no way you can put a perfect cork in the bottle.” [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002] But armed gunmen storm the Indian Parliament on December 13, and a group based in Pakistan and allied with al-Qaeda is blamed (see December 13, 2001). Tensions suddenly rise between India and Pakistan, and Musharraf halts troop deployments to the Afghan border. The border near Tora Bora still is not adequately guarded by Pakistan when the battle of Tora Bora ends on December 17. Less than 100 stragglers entering Pakistan around December 19 are captured by Pakistani forces, but a number of these subsequently escape. [NEWSWEEK, 8/11/2002] Entity Tags: United States, Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani Army, Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistan Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region, Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

December 11, 2001: Moussaoui Indicted, Could Face Death Penalty Zacarias Moussaoui is criminally indicted for his role in the 9/11 attacks. If he is found guilty, he could be sentenced to death. [MSNBC, 12/11/2001; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/12/2001] Moussaoui has admitted to being a member of al-Qaeda, but while he has been involved in militant activity, many have expressed doubts that he was involved in the 9/11 plot. Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Zacarias Moussaoui Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui

December 12, 2001: Ridge Says Terrorist Attacks ‘Could Happen Within the Next Few Weeks’ Tom Ridge, Director of Homeland Security, warns that terrorist strikes “could happen within the next few weeks.” Ridge states that “the quantity and level of threats… have reached a threshold where we should once again place the public on general alert.” He describes the terrorists as “shadow soldiers… a shadow enemy.” [MOTHERJONES, 12/3/2001] Richard Reid does attempt to blow up an airplane with a shoe-bomb later in the month (see December 22, 2001). Entity Tags: Tom Ridge, US Department of Homeland Security Category Tags: Terror Alerts, Internal US Security After 9/11

December 12, 2001: Al-Marri Detained as Material Witness to 9/11 Attacks Qatari citizen Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a computer science graduate student at Illinois’s Bradley University, is arrested as a material witness to the 9/11 attacks. [PEORIA JOURNAL STAR, 12/19/2001; CNN, 12/13/2005] Al-Marri was interviewed twice by the FBI, once on October 2 and again on December 11. Both times, according to the FBI, he lied in response to their questions. Al-Marri claimed to have entered the US on September 10, 2001, his first visit to the country since 1991, when he earned his undergraduate degree at Bradley. [CBS NEWS, 6/23/2003; CNN, 12/13/2005] Connections to 9/11 Terrorists Alleged - The FBI says al-Marri has been in the US since 2000. Al-Marri denied calling the United Arab Emirates phone number of Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of suspected “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui. Prosecutors say al-Hawsawi provided financial backing to Moussaoui and the 9/11 hijackers, and allegedly helped some of the hijackers travel from Pakistan to the United Arab Emirates and then to the US in preparation for the attacks. [CBS NEWS, 6/23/2003; PROGRESSIVE, 3/2007] (Al-Hawsawi will be captured in Pakistan in March 2003, and detained in an undisclosed location somewhere outside the US. See Early-Late June, 2001) [CNN, 12/13/2005] The government also alleges that the phone number was a contact number for Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, another unindicted co-conspirator in the Moussaoui indictment. The government says that two calling cards were used to call the number, which was also listed as a contact number on a package it believes was sent by 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta to the UAE on September 8, 2001. The cards were allegedly used to place phone calls from al-Marri’s residence, from his cellphone, and from the Marriott hotel room he was staying in on September 11. However, none of the three calls to the UAE number were made from phones registered to Al-Marri, though, nor is there proof he placed them. Some of the calls made from the card to the UAE were placed to relatives of al-Marri. [BRADLEY SCOUT, 3/29/2002] In March 2002, Justice Department official Alice Fisher will say that an unnamed al-Qaeda detainee “in a position to know… positively identified al-Marri as an al-Qaeda sleeper operative who was tasked to help new al-Qaeda operatives get settled in the United States for follow-on attacks after 9/11.” That unidentified tipster brought al-Marri to the attention of federal law enforcement shortly after the attacks. FBI officials have said that al-Marri is not considered to have played any part in the attacks, but is still considered a danger to the US. [KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/23/2003] In 2003, the FBI adds that it found “an almanac with bookmarks in pages that provided information about major US dams, reservoirs, waterways and railroads.” [KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/24/2003] He is believed to be a relative of Saudi national and future Guantanamo detainee Mohamed al-Khatani, who is said to be an intended 9/11 hijacker (see July 2002). [NEW YORK TIMES, 6/21/2004] Bank and Credit Card Fraud - According to the FBI, al-Marri obtained a bank account under a false name, rented a motel room under a false name to create a mailing address, and formed a fake company, AAA Carpet, using the motel’s address. The FBI also says al-Marri used a fake Social Security number to open three other bank accounts. Al-Marri was carrying well over 15 fake credit card numbers on him when he was interviewed yesterday, says the US Attorney’s office in Illinois. [CBS NEWS, 6/23/2003; PROGRESSIVE, 3/2007] There are also allegedly over 1,000 more in his personal computer files. He has missed so many classes, the FBI says, that he is on the verge of flunking out. The FBI says al-Marri’s computer also contains Arabic lectures by Osama bin Laden, photographs of the 9/11 attacks, and a cartoon of planes crashing into the World Trade Center. The computer has a folder labeled “jihad arena,” and another labeled “chem,” which, government officials say, contains industrial chemical distributor websites used by al-Marri to obtain information about hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas used in chemical weapons. [CNN, 12/13/2005] Al-Marri consents to the search and the seizure of his computer and other possessions. [BRADLEY SCOUT, 3/29/2002] Al-Marri will be charged with financial crimes in 2002 (see February 8, 2002), charges that later will be dropped (see June 23, 2003). [CBS NEWS, 6/23/2003] Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Zacarias Moussaoui, Mohamed al-Khatani, Alice Fisher, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mohamed Atta, Al-Qaeda, Bradley University, Osama bin Laden, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives Category Tags: Internal US Security After 9/11, Key Captures and Deaths, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

December 12, 2001: Dubious Cease-Fire Gives Al-Qaeda Chance to Escape Tora Bora

Haji Zaman Ghamsharik speaking to reporters on December 16, 2001. [Source: Chris Hondros / Getty Images] US-allied warlord Haji Zaman Ghamsharik makes radio contact with some al-Qaeda commanders in Tora Bora and offers a cease-fire so bin Laden can negotiate a surrender. The other US-allied warlord, Hazrat Ali, is also in secret talks with al-Qaeda and acquiesces to the deal. The US military is reportedly furious, but the fighting stops for the night. US intelligence later concludes that about 800 al-Qaeda fighters escape Tora Bora that night during the cease fire. [NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, 9/11/2005] Other rival Afghan commanders in the area later accuse Ghamsharik of accepting a large bribe from al-Qaeda so they can use the cease fire to escape. [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/30/2002] There are other accounts that the US-allied warlords helped instead of hindered al-Qaeda (see Mid-November 2001-Mid-December 2001). Entity Tags: Haji Zaman Ghamsharik, Hazrat Ali, Al-Qaeda Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

December 12-15, 2001: News Reports Raises Israeli Spying Questions

Two stills from Carl Cameron’s Fox News report on potential Israeli spying in the US. [Source: Fox News] (click image to enlarge) Fox News reports, “Investigators within the DEA, INS, and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying… is considered career suicide.” “A highly placed investigator says there are ‘tie-ins’ between the spy ring and 9/11. However, when asked for details, he flatly refuses to describe them, saying, ‘evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.’” The report also reveals that Amdocs, an Israeli company, is recording virtually every phone call in the US and could be passing information on to the Israeli government (similar claims were first raised in 2000 [INSIGHT, 5/29/2000] ). Fox News suggests that the position of this company might impede the 9/11 investigation. [FOX NEWS, 12/12/2001] Entity Tags: Israel, Amdocs, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Agency Category Tags: Israel

December 12, 2001 and After: Al-Qaeda Suspects Cleared for Extradition to US but Stay in Britain Britain’s highest court rules that three alleged al-Qaeda operatives can be extradited to the US to face charges of involvement in the 1998 African embassy bombings (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). The three, Khalid al-Fawwaz, Ibrahim Eidarous, and Adel Abdel Bary, were arrested in London in late 1998 and early 1999 (see September 23, 1998-July 12, 1999). But the Washington Post reports that the three “can bring still more appeals in Europe that could delay any US trial for months or even years.” [WASHINGTON POST, 12/18/2001] In 2002, Eidarous is sent to a mental hospital after psychiatrists say he is mentally ill. In July 2004, he is set free in Britain because he has been diagnosed with leukemia. An insider at his hospital says: “Doctors know that his cancer is well advanced and he probably does not have that long to live. Many here were shocked he has been released though. He is wanted by the FBI for one of the worst terrorist atrocities in history.” [MIRROR, 7/22/2004] There have been no reports of him dying since. In 2005, the Times of London will report that al-Fawwaz may be extradited to the US soon. His lawyers are said to be making “last ditch” appeals to delay his extradition. [LONDON TIMES, 8/31/2005] But as of 2008, neither he nor Abdel Bary have been extradited to the US or charged in Britain. Entity Tags: Adel Abdel Bary, Khalid al-Fawwaz, Ibrahim Eidarous Category Tags: 1998 US Embassy Bombings, 2005 7/7 London Bombings

December 13, 2001: Authenticity of Bin Laden ‘Confession’ Video Is Disputed

The man in the picture on the left is supposed to be bin Laden in October 2001. The picture on the right is undisputendly bin Laden in December [Source: Reuters] Following the release of a home video in which Osama bin Laden apparently confesses to involvement in 9/11 (see Mid-November 2001), some commentators question its authenticity, as a number of strange facts about the video soon emerge. For example, all previous videos had been made with the consent of bin Laden, and usually released to the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera. This video was supposedly recorded without his knowledge, found in a house in Afghanistan, and then passed to the CIA by an unknown person or group. Experts point out that it would be possible to fake such a video. So many people doubt the video’s authenticity that President Bush soon makes a statement, saying it was “preposterous for anybody to think this tape was doctored. Those who contend it’s a farce or a fake are hoping for the best about an evil man.” [GUARDIAN, 12/15/2001] Some commentators will suggest that the person thought to be bin Laden is not actually the al-Qaeda leader. For example, arabist Kevin Barrett will say that the person in the video is “at least 40 or 50 pounds heavier, and his facial features [are] obviously different.” [CAPITAL TIMES (MADISON), 2/14/2006] The man said to be bin Laden also makes some questionable statements in the video:

“I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building…” [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 12/13/2001 ] The jet fuel spilled from the planes burned up about 10 minutes after impact (see 8:57 a.m. September 11, 2001), the towers’ structure did not melt (see September 12, 2001-February 2002), and the towers were not made of iron, but steel. [NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, 9/2005, PP. 6 ] Bin Laden had studied civil engineering at university and had experience as a construction contractor. [BURKE, 2004, PP. 47; LADEN, 2005, PP. XII-XIII] It is unclear why he would think the towers were made of iron. 
“We did not reveal the operation to [the brothers who conducted the operation] until they are there and just before they boarded the planes.” [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 12/13/2001 ] All the hijackers purchased tickets for the 9/11 flights about two weeks in advance (see August 25-September 5, 2001). The six plot leaders had flight training (see July 6-December 19, 2000, (June 28-December 2000), January-February 2001, and May 5 and 10, 2000), and some of the other 13 are thought to have assisted with target surveillance and casing flights (see May 24-August 14, 2001, August 1, 2001, June 2001 and August 2001). 
“Those who were trained to fly didn’t know the others. One group of people did not know the other group.” [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 12/13/2001 ] The opposite is true: the pilots intermingled with the muscle and the teams for the various planes mixed (see April 23-June 29, 2001, April 12-September 7, 2001, and June 27-August 23, 2001). 

There are reports that bin Laden had from four to ten look-alike doubles at the time. [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 10/7/2001; LONDON TIMES, 11/19/2001] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Kevin Barrett, Central Intelligence Agency, George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Other 9/11 Investigations

December 13, 2001: ISI-Connected Militants Attack Indian Parliament

A terrorist lies dead near the entrance to the Indian Parliament building. [Source: R. V. Moorthy] The Indian Parliament building in New Delhi is attacked by Islamic militants. Fourteen people, including the five attackers, are killed. India blames the Pakistani militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba for the attacks. Twelve days later, Maulana Masood Azhar, head of Jaish-e-Mohammed, is arrested by Pakistan and his group is banned. He is freed one year later. [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 12/25/2001; CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 12/16/2002] The Parliament attack leads to talk of war, even nuclear war, between Pakistan and India, until Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cracks down on militant groups in early January. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 12/28/2001; WALL STREET JOURNAL, 1/3/2002; GUARDIAN, 5/25/2002] As a result of the rising tensions, Pakistani troop deployments near the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan are halted, allowing many al-Qaeda and Taliban to escape into Pakistan (see December 10, 2001). It appears that Saeed Sheikh and Aftab Ansari, working with the ISI, were also involved in the attacks. [PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW, 3/3/2002; VANITY FAIR, 8/2002] Entity Tags: Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Maulana Masood Azhar, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Saeed Sheikh, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Aftab Ansari Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Saeed Sheikh, Alleged Al-Qaeda Linked Attacks

December 14, 2001: Two US-Based Charities Are Shut Down for Links to Al-Qaeda and Other Militant Groups US intelligence had been investigating the US-based Global Relief Foundation (GRF) long before 9/11 for links to al-Qaeda and other radical militant groups (see 1997-Late Spring 2001 and March 2000).The plan is to shut down a number of GRF’s overseas offices while continuing to monitor the GRF’s main office in Illinois and see how that office reacts to the overseas shutdowns. But on December 13, 2001, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon calls the Illinois office one day before the planned raids and asks them to comment about an imminent crack down on the charity (see December 3-14, 2001). The FBI quickly decides that the GRF is destroying documents after the tip-off, and they hastily arrange a raid on the Illinois office and the overseas offices the next day. Since the GRF and the Illinois-based Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) are considered to be closely linked, the BIF US office is raided and shut down at the same time, and the houses of GRF executive director Mohammad Chehade and BIF executive director Enaam Arnaout are searched. GRF fund-raiser Rabih Haddad is detained on the basis of overstaying a visa while Arnaout remains free in the US. [9/11 COMMISSION, 8/21/2004, PP. 98-100 ] October 18, 2002, the Treasury Department will officially designate GRF a terrorism financier. It will do the same to BIF on November 19, 2002. The UN also soon lists both groups as linked to al-Qaeda. [9/11 COMMISSION, 8/21/2004, PP. 98-100 ] Haddad will be imprisoned for 19 months and then deported for the immigration violation. [METRO TIMES, 3/17/2004] Entity Tags: Global Relief Foundation, Al-Qaeda, Benevolence International Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Rabih Haddad, Enaam Arnaout, Mohammad Chehade, Philip Shenon Category Tags: Terrorism Financing, BIF

(December 14, 2001): Would-Be Shoe Bomber Backs out of Plot

Saajid Badat. [Source: BBC] Saajid Badat, a radical Muslim recruited to perform a shoe bombing on a transatlantic flight (see November 20, 2001), backs out of the plot. Although he already has a ticket to travel from Manchester to Amsterdam and then to the US for December 21, he sends his handler in Pakistan a short coded message saying he cannot go through with the attack. He hides the detonator and the explosive at his home, but, after his partner Richard Reid is arrested (see December 22, 2001), police will uncover Belgian telephone cards he had used to keep in touch with a local contact they had shared in Brussels, Nizar Trabelsi. The police will arrest Badat in November 2003 and in April 2005 he will be sentenced to 13 years in jail. The length of the sentence will reflect the co-operation he provides to police. [BBC NEWS, 4/22/2005; O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 231-232] Entity Tags: Saajid Badat, Nizar Trabelsi Category Tags: 2001 Attempted Shoe Bombing, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism

December 14, 2001: Britain Passes New Anti-Terrorism Law Britain passes the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act, a controversial piece of legislation whose provisions include a ban on sending another person abroad to undergo terrorist training and instruction. The measure was introduced in response to information indicating there were networks in Britain that sent radical Muslims to foreign camps, such as those in Afghanistan. One of the leaders of such a network was extremist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, an informer for British security services (see Early 1997). Authors Sean O’Neill and Daniel McGrory will comment, “Yet even after the new laws were introduced, Abu Hamza’s followers continued to disappear off to camps run by outlawed groups, and still nobody in authority laid a finger on him.” [O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 291] Entity Tags: Sean O’Neill, Daniel McGrory, Abu Hamza al-Masri Category Tags: Abu Hamza Al-Masri, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism

December 15, 2001: Bin Laden Said to Make Final Radio Broadcast from Tora Bora and Head North According to author Ron Suskind, on this date bin Laden makes a broadcast on his shortwave radio from somewhere within Tora Bora, Afghanistan. He praises his “most loyal fighters” still fighting in Tora Bora and says “forgive me” for drawing them into a defeat. He says the battle will continue “on new fronts.” Then he leads a prayer and leaves Tora Bora. Suskind says, “With a small band, he escaped on horseback toward the north. The group, according to internal CIA reports, took a northerly route to the province of Nangarhar—past the Khyber Pass, and the city of Jalalabad—and into the province of Konar. That day and the next, much of the remaining al-Qaeda force of about 800 soldiers moved to the south toward Pakistan.” [SUSKIND, 2006, PP. 74-75 SOURCES: RON SUSKIND] A radio had been captured by US allied forces some days earlier, allowing the US to listen in to bin Laden’s communications (see Late October-Early December 2001). In another account, a professional guide and former Taliban official later claims to have led bin Laden and a group of about 30 at this time on a four day trip into Pakistan and then back into a different part of Afghanistan. [NEWSWEEK, 8/11/2002] Still other accounts have bin Laden heading south into Pakistan at this time instead (see Mid-December 2001). An article in the British Daily Telegraph entitled “Bin Laden’s voice heard on radio in Tora Bora” will appear the very next day, detailing some of these communications. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 12/16/2001] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden

December 2001-Early January 2002: ISI Said to Help Bin Laden and Taliban Escape and Resettle in Pakistan Yunus Qanooni, the interior minister of Afghanistan’s new government, accuses elements of Pakistan’s ISI of helping bin Laden and Mullah Omar escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan. He further asserts that the ISI are still “probably protecting” both bin Laden and Mullah Omar and “concealing their movements and sheltering leaders of Taliban and al-Qaeda.” [BBC, 12/30/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 2/13/2002] In addition, New Yorker magazine will report in early 2002, “Some CIA analysts believe that bin Laden eluded American capture inside Afghanistan with help from elements of the [ISI].” [NEW YORKER, 1/21/2002] Another report suggests that Hamid Gul, former director of the ISI, is behind moves to help the Taliban establish a base in remote parts of Pakistan just across the Afghanistan border. Gul was head of the ISI from 1987 to 1989, but has remained close to Afghan groups in subsequent years and has been nicknamed the “godfather of the Taliban.” One report will later suggest that he was one of the masterminds of the 9/11 plot (see July 22, 2004). The US is said to be interested in interrogating Gul, but “because of his high profile and the ripples it would cause in the Pakistan army, this is unlikely to happen…” Yet, at the same time that the ISI is reportedly helping al-Qaeda and the Taliban escape, the Pakistan army is deployed to the Afghanistan border in large numbers to prevent them from escaping. [ASIA TIMES, 12/13/2001] In November 2001, it was reported that the US was continuing to rely on the ISI for intelligence about Afghanistan, a move none other than Gul publicly derided as “foolish.”(see November 3, 2001). Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden, Younis Qanooni, Hamid Gul, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

Mid-December 2001: Videotape Shows Bin Laden Heading into Pakistan A videotape obtained by the CIA shows bin Laden at the end of the Tora Bora battle. He is walking on a trail either in Afghanistan and heading toward Pakistan, or already in Pakistan. Bin Laden is seen instructing his party how to dig holes in the ground to lie undetected at night. A US bomb explodes in the distance. Referring to where the bomb was dropped, he says, “We were there last night.” The existence of this videotape will not be reported until late 2006. [WASHINGTON POST, 9/10/2006] In September 2005, the New York Times will report that, “On or about Dec. 16, 2001, according to American intelligence estimates, bin Laden left Tora Bora for the last time, accompanied by bodyguards and aides.… Bin Laden and his men are believed to have journeyed on horseback directly south toward Pakistan.” [NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, 9/11/2005] Other accounts have him heading north into other parts of Afghanistan around this time instead (see December 15, 2001). Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden

December 16, 2001: Fox News Removes Controversial Story from Website, but Story Nonetheless Makes an Impact Fox News removes its series on the “art student spy ring” from its website after only two days, in response to pressure from The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and others. CAMERA suggests the reporter “has something, personally, about Israel.… Maybe he’s very sympathetic to the Arab side.” [SALON, 5/7/2002] The head of the ADL calls the report “sinister dangerous innuendo which fuels anti-Semitism.” [FORWARD, 12/21/2001] Yet there does not appear to be any substance to these personal attacks (and Forward later reverses its stance on the spy ring (see March 15, 2002)). Fox News also never makes a formal repudiation or correction about the series. The contents of the series continues to be generally ignored by the mainstream media, but it makes a big impact inside the US government: An internal DEA communiqué from December 18 mentions the Fox report by name, and warns of security breaches in telecommunications as described in the Fox report. [SALON, 5/7/2002] Entity Tags: “Israeli art students”, Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Drug Enforcement Agency, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Fox News Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Israel, Media

December 16, 2001: Czech Police Chief Says No Evidence Atta Met Iraqi Agent in Prague Czech Police Chief Jiri Kolar says that there is no evidence that 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in April (see April 8, 2001). He also says—contradicting earlier reports—that there is no documentary evidence that Atta traveled to Prague at all in 2001. Additionally, an unnamed Czech intelligence official tells the newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes, that that the person who had met with al-Ani on April 2001 near Prague was not Atta. Another person with the same name had arrived in Prague in 2001 but he “didn’t have the same identity card number.” Furthermore, “There was a great difference in their ages, their nationalities didn’t match, basically nothing—it was someone else,” the source says. It is also reported that a man named Hassan, described as a businessman and a long-time member of Prague’s Arab community, claims to have been a close friend of al-Ani. Hassan says that he believes the Czechs had mistaken another man for Atta, a used car dealer from Nuremberg by the name of Saleh, who often visited Prague to meet al-Ani and and who sold him at least one car. “I have sat with the two of them at least twice. The double is an Iraqi who has met with the consul. If someone saw a photo of Atta he might easily mistake the two,” Hassan says. [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/16/2001; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/16/2001; DAILY TELEGRAPH, 12/18/2001 SOURCES: HASSAN, JIRI KOLAR, UNNAMED CZECH INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS, UNNAMED INTERIOR MINISTRY OFFICIAL] Responding to the report, Gabriela Bartikova, spokeswoman for the Czech Minister of Interior, says that the Czech intelligence agency still believes that Mohamed Atta and al-Ani, the consul and second secretary of the Iraqi embassy met in April 2001. She says, “Minister Gross had the information from BIS (the Czech Republic’s Intelligence Agency), and BIS guarantees the information. So we stick by that information.” At about the same time, US officials tell the Associated Press they also still believe the meeting had transpired. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/16/2001] Entity Tags: Stanislav Gross, Mohamed Atta, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links

December 17, 2001: Egyptian National Arrested, Suspected of Facilitating 9/11 Hijackings

Abdallah Higazy. [Source: Washington Post] FBI agents arrest Egyptian national Abdallah Higazy in a New York hotel room, and interrogate him over his supposed ownership of an air-band transceiver capable of air-to-air and air-to-ground communications. The FBI suspects Higazy, a student at Brooklyn’s Polytechnic University, of facilitating the 9/11 hijackings. Higazy arrived in New York from Cairo to study engineering under US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Institute for International Education programs, in August 2001. The Institute arranged for Higazy to stay at the Millennium Hilton Hotel, just across the street from the World Trade Center. On September 11, Higazy, along with other hotel residents, was evacuated after the second plane hit the Twin Towers. He was carrying about $100 in cash and his wallet. Higazy does not return to the hotel until December 17, when three FBI agents are waiting for him. Hotel employees had found a transceiver capable of air-to-air and air-to-ground transmissions in his room safe, along with a Koran and his passport. The FBI believes that Higazy may have used the radio as a beacon to guide the hijackers. Higazy denies owning any such transceiver. A federal judge warns the FBI and federal prosecutors that merely finding a radio in a room safe occupied by Higazy does not constitute enough evidence to continue holding the suspect, and absent further evidence he will release Higazy on December 28. Instead, the FBI will browbeat a false confession from Higazy (see December 27, 2001). [WASHINGTON POST, 10/25/2007] Entity Tags: Institute for International Education, Abdallah Higazy, Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Agency for International Development Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

December 17, 2001: US Admits to Losing Track of Bin Laden’s Location US intelligence and Pentagon officials admit having lost track of Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora area in the Northwest of Afghanistan. “The chatter stopped,” says John Stufflebeem. According to commanders of the Northern Alliance, as many as 500 al-Qaeda members might still be at large. [ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, 12/18/2001] The same day, Rumsfeld says he has heard that there were 30 or 31 persons being held in custody around Tora Bora as of December 16. It is unclear whether any high-ranking al-Qaeda members are among them. Meanwhile, a detention center is being built at Kandahar. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/17/2001] Entity Tags: John Stufflebeem, Donald Rumsfeld, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

December 17, 2001: US Declares Victory at Tora Bora; Afghan War Considered Over

Four prisoners captured at Tora Bora and shown to the media on December 17, 2001. [Source: Getty Images] US-allied forces declare that the battle of Tora Bora has been won. A ten-day ground offensive that began on December 5 has cleared out the remaining Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Tora Bora. The Afghan war is now widely considered to be over. However, many will later consider the battle a failure because most of the enemy escapes (see December 5-17, 2001), and because the Taliban will later regroup. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002] The Christian Science Monitor later reports that up to 2,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda were in the area when the battle began. The vast majority successfully fled, and only 21 al-Qaeda fighters were finally captured. [CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 3/4/2002] US intelligence analysts later estimate that around 1,000 to 1,100 al-Qaeda fighters and an unknown number of leaders escaped Tora Bora, while Pakistani officials estimate 4,000 fighters plus 50 to 80 leaders escaped (see October 2004). [KNIGHT RIDDER, 10/30/2004] Author Ron Suskind will suggest in 2006 that there were just over 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban in the area, and of those, 250 were killed or captured. [SUSKIND, 2006, PP. 75 SOURCES: RON SUSKIND] Bin Laden left the area by December 15, if not earlier (see December 15, 2001 and Mid-December 2001). It is believed that al-Qaeda’s number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also escaped the area around the same time. [KNIGHT RIDDER, 10/20/2002] Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Taliban, US Department of Defense Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

December 17-18, 2001: Hamas Threatens to Attack US On December 17, 2001, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad release a joint manifesto declaring, “Americans are the enemies of the Palestinian people [and] a target for future attacks.” The next day, Hamas leaders issues a statement declaring that “Americans [are] now considered legitimate targets as well as Israelis.” So far, Hamas has not followed through with this threat. However, in February 2003, top Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin will called on Muslims to “threaten Western interests and strike them everywhere” in the event of a war in Iraq, which will begin one month later. [NATIONAL POST, 10/18/2003] Despite these threats, known Hamas operatives will continue to live openly in the US. For instance, the US officially declared Mohammad Salah a terrorist in 1995 (see June 2-5, 2003), the FBI knew he was living openly in Chicago since late 1997, and yet he will not be indicted for crimes committed in the early 1990s until 2004 (see August 20, 2004). Entity Tags: Palestinian Islamic Jihad, United States, Hamas Category Tags: Robert Wright and Vulgar Betrayal, Terrorism Financing

December 18, 2001: FBI Officials Testify to Congress about State of Al-Qaeda The Senate Subcommittee on International Operations and Terrorism holds a hearing on the global reach of al-Qaeda and hears testimony from several intelligence community officers. One of them is Tom Wilshire, a CIA officer on loan to the FBI who was involved in several pre-9/11 failures (see 9:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. January 5, 2000, August 22, 2001, and August 24, 2001). Wilshire is described as the deputy chief of the FBI’s International Terrorism Operations Section. In his opening remarks, Wilshire describes the “worldwide jihad movement,” which is “considered to be legitimate by many of our allies in terms of defense of Islam,” as a “multibillion effort” active in, for example, Chechnya, Bosnia, and the Philippines. Although some of the “tributaries” to the movement are “somehow legitimate,” al-Qaeda is “one of the most significant off-shoots,” and views the US as “the stabilising mechanism that allows the regimes that [Osama] bin Laden views to be corrupt [such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia] and to stay in power.” Wilshire also says that one of bin Laden’s goals was to provoke a “land war in Afghanistan,” although he perhaps did not anticipate it taking its current form. He discusses how al-Qaeda has changed over the years, the bayat oath of loyalty to bin Laden, and numbers of operatives: he puts the organization’s “elite” in the hundreds, but says it also has “small thousands” fighting in places like Afghanistan and Chechnya, as well as “thousands” more around the world, although perhaps “their skill level is not as high.” He also discusses a recently released videotape in which a man thought to be bin Laden said the “muscle” hijackers did not know they were on a suicide mission until the last minute (see Mid-November 2001), and calls bin Laden “very charismatic.” Wilshire adds that radical Islamists have looked at the possibility of setting up training camps in the US, but that it is easier for them to have introductory training in Europe, which was the case of a group of British citizens arrested in Yemen (see December 23, 1998). Finally, he says that al-Qaeda is linked to Abu Sayyaf, which is not just a local Filipino group and falls under “outside influence.” [US CONGRESS. SENATE. SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND TERRORISM, 12/18/2001] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, International Terrorism Operations Section, Senate Subcommittee on International Operations and Terrorism, Tom Wilshire Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

December 18, 2001: Two Suspects Renditioned from Sweden to Be Tortured in Egypt

Ahmed Agiza. [Source: CBC] In Stockholm, Sweden, around 5 p.m., a group of Swedish and US agents seize Egyptian nationals Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed Al-Zery on the street without warning, and drive them immediately to the Stockholm airport. The two men applied for asylum in 2000 and are legal Swedish residents. A Swedish policeman stationed at the airport later reports that the handful of agents escorting the Egyptians are wearing hoods. [WASHINGTON POST, 7/25/2004] At the local airport police office, the clothes of the detainees are cut with scissors, and replaced with red overalls, and the men are tied with handcuffs and leg irons. They are then taken aboard a US-registered Gulfstream V jet, and by 10:00 p.m., they are in the air on their way to Cairo, Egypt, where they allegedly will be tortured. “[I]t was pretty blatant” that they will be tortured, a former intelligence official says. [GUARDIAN, 9/13/2004] More than a month will pass before Swedish officials visit Agiza and Zery to ensure that they are being treated properly. In a report made public shortly after the first visit, Swedish Ambassador to Egypt Sven Linder will write that the two prisoners said they had been treated “excellently” and that “they seemed well-nourished and showed no external signs of physical abuse or such things.” But in the section of the report marked classified, he writes that Agiza complained of having been subjected to “excessive brutality” at the hands of the Swedish security police, and that he was repeatedly beaten in Egyptian prisons. [WASHINGTON POST, 7/25/2004] Agiza’s lawyers later acknowledge that he has been a member of “Egyptian Islamic Jihad,” and was close at one time to al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. According to his lawyers, however, Agiza has not had ties with Zawahiri since a decade ago, and denounces the use of violence by al-Qaeda. In 1999, while living in Iran, he was convicted in absentia by an Egyptian military court for being a member of an illegal organization. He will later be sentenced to 25 years in prison in Egypt (see October 2003). Al-Zery’s involvement with terrorism, on the other hand, is much less apparent. According to Swedish officials, he too was convicted in absentia in Egypt, though this is disputed by his lawyers and human rights groups. He will be released after two years without being charged (see October 2003). [WASHINGTON POST, 7/25/2004] Entity Tags: Muhammed Al-Zery, Ahmed Agiza, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Sven Linder Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

December 19, 2001: US Learns Little about Bin Laden’s Whereabouts from Captured Prisoners Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz admits interrogations of individuals, who were captured when the al-Qaeda stronghold near Tora Bora fell two days before, have not yielded timely information on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. “Most of what I’ve seen seems to be second-hand reports—that we’re not talking to people who are at least telling us that they met with bin Laden or they talked with bin Laden,” he says. “I think one guy claims that he saw bin Laden from several hundred yards away. It’s that quality of information.” He added: “It was a pretty confused situation.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/19/2001] Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Paul Wolfowitz Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan

December 19, 2001: US Official Proclaims ‘We Will Not Leave Central Asia’ after Afghan War Ends Speaking in Kazakhstan, US Deputy Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones states: “We will not leave Central Asia after resolving the conflict [in Afghanistan]. We want to support the Central Asian countries in their desire to reform their societies as they supported us in the war against terrorism. These are not only new but long term relations.” [BBC, 12/19/2001] Entity Tags: Elizabeth Jones Category Tags: US Dominance

December 19, 2001: Sufaat Arrested, May Hold Key to 9/11-Crop Duster Mystery

Yazid Sufaat. [Source: FBI] Yazid Sufaat is arrested in Malaysia. Sufaat is a Malaysian who owns a condominium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where a January 2000 al-Qaeda summit was held (see January 5-8, 2000). He also graduated in 1987 from a California university with a degree in biological sciences. According to interrogations of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Hambali, and other captured prisoners, Sufaat was given the lead in developing chemical and biological weapons for al-Qaeda. But he apparently had been unable to buy the kind of anthrax he wanted for an attack. Zacarias Moussaoui, Mohamed Atta, and other al-Qaeda operatives appeared to have had an interest in crop dusters before 9/11. It has been suggested that this interest served to further Sufaat’s biological weapons plot. This would especially make sense in the case of Moussaoui, since he stayed with Sufaat in Sufaat’s Malaysia apartment for two months in late 2000. Sufaat remains in Malaysian custody. The US has only been able to directly interview him on one brief occasion, in November 2002. [WASHINGTON POST, 3/28/2003; CNN, 10/10/2003; CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 12/7/2003] Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Yazid Sufaat, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Zacarias Moussaoui, Mohamed Atta Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, Hambali, Key Captures and Deaths, Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia

December 19, 2001: Al-Libi Transferred into US Custody; Responsive to Non-Aggressive Interrogation Tactics Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, captured by Pakistani forces six weeks earlier (see November 11, 2001), is handed over to US authorities at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. Two FBI agents from New York are tasked with interrogating him. One of the agents, Russell Fincher, spends more than 80 hours with al-Libi discussing religion and prayer in an effort to establish a close bond. It works, and al-Libi opens up to Fincher, giving him information about Zacarias Moussaoui and the so-called shoe bomber, Richard Reid (see December 22, 2001). [ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 120] But despite this progress, he will soon be transferred to Egypt and tortured there into making some false confessions (see January 2002 and After). Entity Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, Richard C. Reid, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Russell Fincher Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Alleged Iraq-Al-Qaeda Links, Key Captures and Deaths, 2001 Attempted Shoe Bombing

December 20, 2001: US Translation of Bin Laden ‘Confession’ Video Said to Be Misleading Following the release of a home video in which Osama bin Laden apparently confesses to involvement in 9/11 (see Mid-November 2001), a German TV show checks the translation provided by the Pentagon and finds it is flawed. According to Professor Gernot Rotter, scholar of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the University of Hamburg, “This tape is of such poor quality that many passages are unintelligible. And those that are intelligible have often been taken out of context, so that you can’t use that as evidence. The American translators who listened to the tape and transcribed it obviously added things that they wanted to hear in many places.” For example, the sentence translated by Pentagon contractors as “We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy,” is said to be wrong, and the words “in advance” were apparently not said by bin Laden. The sentence “We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day” is also said to be wrong and the word “previous” is not said by bin Laden. In addition, the sentence “We asked each of them to go to America” is said to be a mistranslation; it should have been “They were required to go to America.” [MONITOR-TV (GERMANY), 12/20/2001] Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Gernot Rotter Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

Shortly After December 19, 2001: CIA Station Chief Protests against FBI Interview of Al-Libi CIA officer Richard Blee, who is now chief of the CIA’s station in Kabul, Afghanistan, objects to the FBI interviewing high-ranking al-Qaeda detainee Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The FBI obtained access to al-Libi after he was handed over to the US, and is obtaining some information from him about Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid, who will be prosecuted in the US (see December 19, 2001). However, according to FBI agent Jack Cloonan, “for some reason, the CIA chief of station in Kabul is taking issue with our approach.” [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 6/19/2005] CIA Director George Tenet learns of Blee’s complaints and insists that al-Libi be turned over to the CIA (see January-April 2002), which promptly puts him on a plane to Egypt (see January 2002 and After), where he is tortured and makes false statements (see February 2002). Blee was in charge of the CIA’s bin Laden unit on 9/11 and has only recently become chief of its Kabul station. [BERNTSEN AND PEZZULLO, 2005, PP. 59-60, 297] The FBI, which has long experience interviewing suspects, will continue in its attempts to use rapport-building techniques (see Late March through Early June, 2002), whereas the CIA will employ harsher techniques, despite not having much experience with interviews (see Mid-April 2002). Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, Rich B., Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives Category Tags: High Value Detainees, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

December 20, 2001: US Bans Pakistani Militant Group, but It Continues Operating Under New Name

The Red Fort in Delhi, India, shortly after being attacked in 2000. [Source: BBC] The US officially blocks the assets of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), a Pakistani militant group, and Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), a Pakistani charity front. [WHITE HOUSE, 12/20/2001] LeT has frequently attacked targets in India with the tacit support of the Pakistani government. For instance, LeT took credit for an attack on the Red Fort in Delhi in 2000 that killed three people. [BBC, 3/17/2006] But the US fails to mention Pakistani government support for LeT, particularly long-time support by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is now president of Pakistan (see 1993-1994). The Pakistani government officially bans LeT one month later. But the group changes its name to Jamaat-ud-Dawa and continues operating, though less openly than before. It is said to be closely linked to al-Qaeda. The US action comes just days after LeT was implicated in an attack on the Indian parliament (see December 13, 2001). [ASIA TIMES, 6/4/2004] India will blame the group for major attacks in 2003 and 2005 that each kill about 60 people. [BBC, 3/17/2006] UTN was founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists (see 2000). The CIA was aware before 9/11 that UTN had proposed selling a nuclear weapon to Libya (see Shortly Before September 11, 2001), and that two UTN scientists met with Osama bin Laden (see Shortly Before September 11, 2001), so it is not known why the US waited until now to act against it. Entity Tags: Pervez Musharraf, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI

December 20, 2001: Bush Says He Did Not Feel ‘Sense of Urgency’ to Deal with Bin Laden Before 9/11 In an interview with the Washington Post, President Bush says that, in contrast to the period before 9/11, “there was a significant difference in my attitude after September 11” about al-Qaeda and the threat it posed to the United States. Before the attacks: “I was not on point, but I knew [Osama bin Laden] was a menace and I knew he was a problem. I knew he was responsible, or we felt he was responsible, for the previous bombings that killed Americans. I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice, and would have given the order to do that. I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn’t feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling.” Author Philip Shenon will comment that this interview is something Bush “almost certainly regretted later.” Shenon will also comment on who should have imparted such a sense of urgency, “If anyone on the White House staff had responsibility for making Bush’s blood ‘boil’ that summer about Osama bin Laden, it was [National Security Adviser] Condoleezza Rice.” [WASHINGTON POST, 5/17/2002; SHENON, 2008, PP. 154-155] Entity Tags: Philip Shenon, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Osama bin Laden Category Tags: Warning Signs, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

December 21, 2001: FBI Won’t Release Flight 93 Black Box Information The FBI reveals that it knows what is on the Flight 93 black boxes, but refuses to release the transcript or audio recording. Families of the victims have requested to hear the cockpit voice recording, but the FBI says, “[W]e do not believe that the horror captured on the cockpit voice recording will console them in any way.” [CNN, 12/21/2001] Accuracy in Media immediately submits a Freedom of Information Act request to have the transcript released, but the FBI turns it down because a release “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.” The Philadelphia Daily News asks, “What enforcement proceedings?” and suggests the FBI may be covering up a shootdown of the plane. [PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, 12/28/2001] The recordings are later played, but only in private to victims’ relatives and the 9/11 Commission. Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, Federal Bureau of Investigation Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation

December 21, 2001: Senators Introduce Bills to Create Independent 9/11 Commission Two bipartisan pairs of senators introduce legislation to create independent 9/11 commissions. Senators Joseph Lieberman (D) and John McCain (R) propose to create a 14-member, bipartisan commission with subpoena power. At the same time, Robert Torricelli (D) and Charles Grassley (R) propose to create a 12-member board of inquiry with subpoena power. White House spokeswoman Anne Womack is noncommittal about the proposals, saying, “We look forward to reviewing them. Right now, the president is focused on fighting the war on terrorism.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/21/2001] Entity Tags: John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, Charles Grassley, Robert Torricelli Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: 9/11 Commission

December 21, 2001: Shoe Bomber Misses Flight because of Long Security Checks, Explosives Not Discovered

Richard Reid. [Source: Associated Press] Shoe bomber Richard Reid attempts to board a flight from Paris to Miami, but is delayed by security checks and misses the flight. There are several reasons for the extensive checks:

He bought his $1,800 ticket with cash three days previously. [O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 232-233] 
He is bearded and “of Arabic appearance.” 
According to other passengers, he looks “blank” and acts suspiciously. [DAILY MAIL, 12/24/2001] 
He smells bad. [MIRROR, 10/4/2002; O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 232-233] 
He has no large pieces of luggage for a supposed holiday trip. [O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 232-233] 
The small amount of luggage he does have contains two magazines, a radio, a cassette player and five Arabic cassettes, including two of verses from the Koran. [MIRROR, 10/4/2002] 

Ten days before, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had issued a warning that radicals might try to smuggle weapons or explosives onto a plane in their shoes, but Reid’s boots, which contain explosives, are never searched. There are holes drilled in the boots and even a casual examination of them would make staff suspicious. After missing the plane because of the checks, Reid re-books for the next day. He then e-mails his al-Qaeda contacts, who tell him to proceed as soon as possible. [O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 232-233] According to an FAA source, this incident should lead to a warning in the FAA computer system saying that Reid should be detained if he again attempts to board the flight. The warning would ensure that Reid is questioned the next day and prevented from boarding. However, no such warning is issued. [DAILY MAIL, 12/24/2001] Reid returns the next day and is allowed onto the plane, but fails to blow it up (see December 22, 2001). Entity Tags: Richard C. Reid Category Tags: 2001 Attempted Shoe Bombing, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism

December 22, 2001: Shoe Bomber Plot Foiled, Bomber Claims Allegiance to Bin Laden

Richard Reid’s shoe bomb. [Source: NEFA Foundation] British citizen Richard Reid is arrested for trying to blow up a Miami-bound jet using explosives hidden in his shoe. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/19/2002] Reid fails in his attempt to destroy the American Airlines jet because he is unable to detonate the explosives—he cannot get the fuse to light using matches, despite using up six of them before he is overpowered by the stewards and passengers. Authors Sean O’Neill and Daniel McGrory will comment, “Had Reid used a cheap disposable plastic cigarette lighter to ignite the fuse of his bomb, rather than a match that did not burn for long enough, forensic experts are sure there was enough plastic explosive in his boot to puncture the fuselage of Flight 63 and bring down the aircraft.” [O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 215-217, 236] The attack is supposed to be one of two simultaneous attacks, but Reid’s partner, Saajit Badat, backs out shortly before the bombing (see (December 14, 2001)). Reid will later plead guilty to all charges, and declare himself a follower of Osama bin Laden. [CBS NEWS, 10/4/2002] He may have ties to Pakistan. [WASHINGTON POST, 3/31/2002] It is later believed that Reid and others in the shoe bomb plot reported directly to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). [CNN, 1/30/2003] It has been suggested that KSM has ties to the ISI, and that Reid is a follower of Ali Gilani, a religious leader believed to be working with the ISI (see January 6, 2002). Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Daniel McGrory, Sean O’Neill, Richard C. Reid Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Linked Attacks, Key Captures and Deaths, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, 2001 Attempted Shoe Bombing

December 22, 2001: Karzai Assumes Power in Afghanistan

Hamid Karzai. [Source: United States Agency for International Development] Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai and his transitional government assume power in Afghanistan. It was reported a few weeks before that he had been a paid consultant for Unocal at one time (Karzai and Unocal both deny this), as well as Deputy Foreign Minister for the Taliban. [LE MONDE (PARIS), 12/13/2001; CNN, 12/22/2001] Entity Tags: Unocal, Hamid Karzai, Taliban Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Pipeline Politics, Afghanistan

December 24, 2001: Taliban Leaders Free, Living Openly in Luxury in Pakistan The Guardian reports that many in Afghanistan intelligence say former top Taliban officials are living openly in villas in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At least four top leaders who had been caught have been simply released. Yet another leader, wanted by the US for harboring al-Qaeda operatives at his compound, is able to escape a very loose house arrest in mid-December. Two soldiers were checking on him once a day. One intelligence source claims to know the exact location of many, and says they could be rounded up within hours. A former Taliban minister now working with the Northern Alliance also claims: “Some are living in luxury in fine houses, they are not hiding in holes. They could be in jail by tonight if the political will existed.” The US claims it is working hard to find and catch these leaders. [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/20/2001; GUARDIAN, 12/24/2001] However, it will later be revealed that the US is aware of these Taliban living in Pakistan but will not seriously press Pakistan about them until 2006 (see 2002-2006). Entity Tags: Bush administration, Taliban Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan, Escape From Afghanistan, Haven in Pakistan Tribal Region

December 24, 2001-January 23, 2002: Reporter Daniel Pearl Investigates Sensitive Topics in Pakistan Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl writes stories about the ISI that will lead to his kidnapping and murder (see January 31, 2002).

On December 24, 2001, he reports about ties between the ISI and a Pakistani organization, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, that was working on giving bin Laden nuclear secrets before 9/11 (see 2000 and Mid-August 2001). [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 12/24/2001] 
A few days later, he reports that the ISI-supported militant organization Jaish-e-Mohammed still has its office running and bank accounts working, even though President Pervez Musharraf claims to have banned the group. The Jaish-i-Mohammed is connected to the Al Rashid Trust, one of the first entities whose assets were frozen by the US after 9/11 and through which funding may have passed on its way to the hijackers in the US (see Early August 2001 and September 24, 2001). “If [Pearl] hadn’t been on the ISI’s radarscope before, he was now.” [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 12/31/2001; GUARDIAN, 7/16/2002; VANITY FAIR, 8/2002] 
He begins investigating links between shoe bomber Richard Reid and Pakistani militants, and comes across connections to the ISI and a mysterious religious group called Al-Fuqra. [WASHINGTON POST, 2/23/2002] 
He also may be looking into the US training and backing of the ISI. [GULF NEWS, 3/25/2002] 
He is writing another story on Dawood Ibrahim, a powerful Islamic militant and gangster protected by the ISI, and other Pakistani organized crime figures. [NEWSWEEK, 2/4/2002; VANITY FAIR, 8/2002] 
Former CIA agent Robert Baer later claims to be working with Pearl on an investigation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. [UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, 4/9/2004] It is later suggested that Mohammed masterminds both Reid’s shoe bomb attempt and the Pearl kidnapping, and has connections to Pakistani gangsters and the ISI, so some of these explanations could fit together. [ASIA TIMES, 10/30/2002; CNN, 1/30/2003; UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, 4/9/2004] Kidnapper Saeed will later say of Pearl, “Because of his hyperactivity he caught our interest.” [NEWS (ISLAMABAD), 2/15/2002] Pearl is kidnapped on January 23, 2002, and his murder is confirmed on February 22, 2002. [CNN, 2/22/2002]

Entity Tags: Dawood Ibrahim, Al-Fuqra, Daniel Pearl, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Osama bin Laden, Pervez Musharraf, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Robert Baer, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Saeed Sheikh, 2001 Attempted Shoe Bombing

December 25, 2001: Experts: WTC Collapse Investigation Inadequate The New York Times reports that “some of the nation’s leading structural engineers and fire-safety experts” believe the investigation into the collapse of the WTC is “inadequate” and “are calling for a new, independent and better-financed inquiry that could produce the kinds of conclusions vital for skyscrapers and future buildings nationwide.” Experts critical of the investigation include “some of those people who are actually conducting it.” They point out that the current team of 20 or so investigators has no subpoena power, inadequate financial support, and little staff support. Additionally, it has been prevented from interviewing witnesses and frequently prevented from examining the disaster site, and has even been unable to obtain basic information like detailed blueprints of the buildings that collapsed. The decision to recycle the steel columns, beams, and trusses from the WTC rapidly in the days immediately after 9/11 means definitive answers may never be known. [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/25/2001] Incredibly, some of the steel is reforged into commemorative medallions selling for $30 apiece. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1/30/2002] Entity Tags: World Trade Center Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: WTC Investigation

December 26, 2001: Suspected Bojinka and WTC Bomb Plotter Arrested But Only Charged for Minor Offenses A Jordanian suspected of involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing (see February 26, 1993) and 1995 Bojinka plot (see January 6, 1995) is arrested but apparently only charged with minor offenses. Hadi Yousef Alghoul had been arrested in the Philippines in March 1995 and accused of involvement in the Bojinka plot there. (see April 1, 1995-Early 1996). He apparently is the cousin of bomber Ramzi Yousef. [RESSA, 2003, PP. 25] On December 26, 2001, he is arrested in the Philippines again. He is found with nearly 300 sticks of dynamite and other bomb making materials. A police colonel says Alghoul had been under surveillance for years. [CNN, 12/28/2001; CONTEMPORARY SOUTHEAST ASIA, 12/1/2002] Police say he is one of the United States’ 25 most wanted terrorists with a $25 million reward for his arrest in connection with the 1993 WTC bombing. His “fingerprints perfectly matched those of a terrorist tagged in the World Trade Center bombing.” He is also wanted for plotting the assassination of Americans. [MANILA BULLETIN, 1/6/2002] Yet despite all these accusations, he is not extradited to the US as other Bojinka suspects were, and he is merely charged in 2002 with the illegal possession of explosive devices. There have been no further news accounts about him. [MANILA SUN-STAR, 11/16/2002] Entity Tags: Hadi Yousef Alghoul, Ramzi Yousef Category Tags: 1995 Bojinka Plot, Philippine Militant Collusion, Ramzi Yousef, Key Captures and Deaths, Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia

December 26, 2001: Bin Laden Again Denies 9/11 Involvement, but Praises Hijackers

Osama bin Laden making his “Nineteen Students” speech. [Source: Al Jazeera] Osama bin Laden makes a new video statement about 9/11, again denying the US has enough evidence against him to warrant an attack on Afghanistan (see September 16, 2001 and September 28, 2001), which he calls “a vicious campaign based on mere suspicion.” However, in what Professor Bruce Lawrence calls “his most extended and passionate celebration of the hijackers of 9/11,” he praises the 19 who carried out “the blessed strikes against global unbelief and its leader America.” He says of the hijackers, “It was not nineteen Arab states that did this deed. It was not Arab armies or ministries who humbled the oppressor who harms us in Palestine and elsewhere. It was nineteen post-secondary school students—I beg Allah almighty to accept them—who shook America’s throne, struck its economy right in the heart, and dealt the biggest military power a mighty blow, by the grace of Allah Almighty.” He continues by saying that the hijackers “are the people who have given up everything for the sake of ‘There is no Allah but Allah.’” He also criticizes Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and suggests that Israel is trying to expand its borders to Medina, currently in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden also attacks the sanctions against Iraq, which he notes have resulted in “the murder of over a million children.” [LADEN, 2005, PP. 145-157] Bin Laden’s left arm appears to be injured in the video, fueling speculation he was wounded in the battle for Afghanistan [CNN, 7/23/2002] No new videotapes of Bin Laden speaking are released for nearly three years after this (see October 29, 2004). [BBC, 10/30/2004] Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Bruce Lawrence Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements

December 26, 2001: Bin Laden Allegedly Dies of Lung Problems The media reports that Osama bin Laden died of lung problems in the mountains of Tora Bora in mid-December. The report, which quotes a Taliban leader who allegedly attended bin Laden’s funeral, is originally published in the Pakistan Observer, and then picked up by Fox News. According to the Taliban leader, bin Laden was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease. He also claims bin Laden was laid to rest honorably near where he died and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief. About 30 close associates of bin Laden, including his most trusted and personal bodyguards, his family members, and some “Taliban friends,” attended the funeral. A volley of bullets was also fired to pay final tribute to him. The Taliban leader claims to have seen bin Laden’s face before the burial and says, “he looked pale… but calm, relaxed, and confident.” When asked where bin Laden was buried, the leader says, “I am sure that like other places in Tora Bora, that particular place too must have vanished.” [FOX NEWS, 12/26/2001] A man thought to be bin Laden will continue to issue media statements after his alleged death (see, for example, November 12, 2002). At the time this report becomes public, other accounts suggest bin Laden is alive, has just escaped from the battle of Tora Bora, and is fleeing pursuers (see December 8-14, 2001). Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Taliban Category Tags: Osama Bin Laden

December 27, 2001: FBI Forces False Confession from Terror Suspect The FBI administers a polygraph test to Egyptian national Abdallah Higazy, who has been in custody since December 17, 2001, on suspicion of facilitating the 9/11 attacks (see December 17, 2001). Higazy is about to be released by a judge because no real evidence exists that he had any connections to the attacks. The test is administered by FBI agent Michael Templeton; upon its completion, court documents show, Templeton concludes that Higazy is being evasive with his answers. But Templeton’s conclusion raises questions. Towards the end of the session, Higazy asks that the questioning be stopped because he is feeling intense pain in his arm and is having trouble breathing. Instead of releasing Higazy, Templeton calls him “a baby” and says that “a nine-year-old” could endure that kind of pain. It is not clear what is causing Higazy to be in pain, but from the conversation, it is clear that something untoward is occurring. During the questioning, Templeton threatens Higazy’s family. He tells Higazy that the FBI will make his brother “live in scrutiny” and will “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” According to court documents, by this point Templeton is screaming, smashing his fist into the table, and accusing Higazy of lying. Templetom also hints that the FBI might have Higazy’s family turned over to Egyptian intelligence. “[T]heir laws are different than ours,” he says. “[T]hey are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t—yeah, probably about torture, sure.” Higazy knows full well what Egyptian agents could do to his family members. Unwilling for his family to be tortured, he confesses to owning a radio the FBI is asking about. He is denied bail and remains in custody awaiting charge. Templeton will not deny coercing the confession from Higazy in subsequent questioning by Higazy’s lawyers. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/25/2007] Entity Tags: Michael Templeton, Abdallah Higazy, Federal Bureau of Investigation Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11

December 30, 2001: Afghan Minister Claims ISI Supports bin Laden The new Afghan Interior Minister Younis Qanooni claims that the ISI helped bin Laden escape from Afghanistan: “Undoubtedly they (ISI) knew what was going on.” He claims that the ISI is still supporting bin Laden even if Pakistani President Musharraf isn’t. [BBC, 12/30/2001] Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Younis Qanooni, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pervez Musharraf Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI

Late 2001: Taliban’s Top Drug Kingpin Arrested by US Then Let Go In the 1990s, Afghan drug kingpin Haji Bashir Noorzai developed close ties to Taliban top leader Mullah Omar, al-Qaeda, and the Pakistani ISI. He becomes the top drug kingpin in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. He is also reputedly the richest person in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s banker. For instance, according to US sources, as the Taliban began their military defeat after 9/11, they entrusted Noorzai with as much as $20 million in Taliban money for safekeeping. But he then surrenders to the US military in Afghanistan. Noorzai later says of this time, “I spent my days and nights comfortably. There was special room for me. I was like a guest, not a prisoner.” [CBS NEWS, 2/7/2002; RISEN, 2006, PP. 152-162] He spends several days in custody at the Kandahar airport. He speaks to US military and intelligence officials, but is released before Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents arrive in the country to question him. [NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, 4/26/2002] The other top drug kingpin for the Taliban is also arrested then let go by the US at this time (see December 2001 and After). Noorzai then lives in Pakistan, where he has been given a Pakistani passport by the ISI. He operates drug-processing laboratories there and has little trouble traveling to other countries. [RISEN, 2006, PP. 152-162] In 2004 it will be reported, “According to House International Relations Committee testimony this year, Noorzai smuggles 4,400 pounds of heroin out of the Kandahar region to al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan every eight weeks.” [USA TODAY, 10/26/2004] Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Haji Bashir Noorzai, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Taliban Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Drugs, Afghanistan, Key Captures and Deaths

Late 2001: US Opposes Peacekeeping and Counter-narcotics in Afghanistan James Dobbins, the Bush Administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan, later will say that three decisions in late 2001 “really shaped” the future of Afghanistan. “One was that US forces were not going to do peacekeeping of any sort, under any circumstances. They would remain available to hunt down Osama bin Laden and find renegade Taliban, but they were not going to have any role in providing security for the country at large. The second was that we would oppose anybody else playing this role outside Kabul. And this was at a time when there was a good deal of interest from other countries in doing so.” The main reason for this is because it is felt this would tie up more US resources as well, for instance US airlifts to drop supplies. The third decision is that US forces would not engage in any counter-narcotics activities. The Atlantic Monthly will later note, “One effect these policies had was to prolong the disorder in Afghanistan and increase the odds against a stable government. The absence of American or international peacekeepers guaranteed that the writ of the new [Hamid] Karzai government would extend, at best, to Kabul itself.” [ATLANTIC MONTHLY, 10/2004] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Hamid Karzai, Taliban, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan Category Tags: Afghanistan

Late December 2001: US Decides to Accept Iran’s Help against Al-Qaeda but Offer Nothing in Return In late November 2001, State Department officials write a paper suggesting that the US has an opportunity to work with Iran to fight al-Qaeda. The CIA seconds the idea, and is willing to exchange information and coordinate border sweeps with Iran. However, neoconservatives led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argue that the US cannot engage with Iran and other officially declared state sponsors of terrorism. In late December 2001, at a meeting of deputy cabinet officials, it is decided that the US will accept tactical information about terrorists from countries on the state sponsors list but offer nothing in return. This policy is called the “Hadley Rules” after Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who chairs the meeting. One month later, President Bush publicly lists Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil,” greatly reducing Iran’s cooperation regarding al-Qaeda. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/22/2004] However, the policy appears to be largely focused on Iran, as the US continues working with countries on the state sponsors list like Sudan and Syria against al-Qaeda (see June 13, 2002 and Early 2002-January 2003). Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Stephen J. Hadley, US Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran Category Tags: Counterterrorism Policy/Politics

Timeline links

September 8 September 9 September 10 September 11