During a June 2002 meeting of various agency representatives tasked with tracing al Qaeda financing, FBI Agent Dennis Lormel reported on recent disclosures by the government of the United Arab Emirates. “What Lormel and his team learned was that [UAE financial kingpin Pacha] Wazir was responsible for handling a startling $67 million in assets for […]
Category: quotes
6/15/2002
“The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which was critical of many [Bush] administration policies, issued a report in June 2002 entitled Deadly Arsenals, which asserted that Saddam was determined to develop nuclear weapons, may have hidden up to 600 metric tons [600 short tons] of CW [chemical weapons] agents, had the capability to conduct clandestine […]
6/15/2002
“Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a cleric of Kuwaiti origin and spokesman for al-Qa’ida, posted a statement on the Internet in June 2002 saying that ‘Al-Qa’ida has the right to kill four million Americans, including one million children, displace double that figure, and injure and cripple hundreds and thousands.’ Ghaith’s rationale for such grisly figures was based […]
6/15/2002
“In June 2002, NSA [National Security Agency] and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community turned their attention away from Afghanistan and al Qaeda and toward a new target–Iraq.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry, Page 234 […]
6/15/2002
“In a statement posted on an al-Qaeda Web site in June 2002, [al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman] Abu-Ghaith justified the principle of massive attacks on the United States by calculating the number of Muslims who had been unjustly killed as a result of American and Israeli actions. Based on this calculation Abu-Ghaith declared that al-Qaeda had ‘the […]
6/15/2002
In June 2002, Puerto Rican former gang member Jose Padilla “found himself incarcerated in a naval brig in South Carolina on the direct authority of the secretary of defense [Donald Rumsfeld]. Padilla was one of three prisoners accused of terrorism held in the jail who were subjected to a carefully designed regime of isolation and […]
6/15/2002
Secretary of Defense Donald “Rumsfeld has articulated the justification for preemptive action [in Iraq] by stating [before NATO officials in Brussels, Belgium, in June 2002] that the ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of weapons of mass destruction.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Foreign Affairs, […]
6/15/2002
“From March until June 2002, the FBI began a rapport-building method of dealing with [al Qaeda operations chief] Abu Zubaydah… According to [FBI Agent Ali] Soufan, FBI’s top experts on al-Qaeda and fluent in Arabic, he and [FBI Agent Steve] Gaudin were able to gain the confidence of Abu Zubaydah with the use of proven […]
6/15/2002
“Senator Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, believes that the U.S. intelligence community, and the FBI specifically, had more than enough information to spot the September 11 plot. …’I think there was a virtual blueprint,’ Specter told [FBI Director Robert] Mueller during a June 2002 Judiciary Committee hearing.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting […]
6/14/2002
Explaining the Bush Administration’s rationale for war against Iraq in The Wall Street Journal on June 14, 2002, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice stated: ” ‘It is not because you have some chain of evidence saying Iraq may have given a weapon to al-Qaeda. …It is because Iraq is one of those places that is […]