In November 1996, FBI agent assigned to the CIA Counterterrorist Center, Daniel “Coleman traveled to an American military base in Germany with two United States attorneys, Kenneth Karas and Patrick Fitzgerald. There in a safe house was a jittery Sudanese informer named Jamal al-Fadl, who claimed to have worked for bin Laden in Khartoum. …[al-Fadl finally admitted] that he had run off with more than $100,000 of bin Laden’s money. …Fadl began talking about an organization called al-Qaeda. It was the first time any of the men in the room had heard the term. He described training camps and sleeper cells. He talked about bin Laden’s interest in acquiring nuclear and chemical weapons. He said that al-Qaeda had been responsible for the 1992 bombing in Yemen and for training the insurgents who shot down the American helicopters in Somalia that same year. He gave names and drew organizational charts. …When Coleman got back to the bureau, no one seemed particularly interested. …there were other more pressing investigations.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]
– Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Pages 5-6