“Richard Reid, the so-called ‘shoe bomber’…was captured aboard American Airlines Flight 63 en route from Paris to Miami on December 22, 2001. …The FBI later confirmed that there were two TATP [triacetone triperoxide]-based IEDs [improvised explosive devices] hidden in his shoes, prompting airlines worldwide to force passengers to remove footwear as they passed through airport […]
Category: quotes
12/22/2001
On November 13, 2001, amidst Phase Three of Operation Enduring Freedom, “the Taliban had fled from Kabul [Afghanistan]. By early December, all major cities had fallen to the coalition. On December 22 [2001], Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun leader from Kandahar, was installed as chairman of Afghanistan’s interim administration. Afghanistan had been liberated from the rule […]
12/22/2001
“The United Nations organized a conference of non-Taliban Afghan tribal leaders, and on December 22 [2001] Hamid Karzai, an India-educated, ethnic Pashtun from southern Afghanistan, was installed in Kabul as president.” – Karen DeYoung, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, Page 353 […]
12/22/2001
“In Operation Enduring Freedom [which launched on October 7, 2001], Central Command and its Afghan allies had defeated the Taliban regime and destroyed Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist sanctuary in seventy-six days [by December 22, 2001].” – Tommy Franks with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier, Page xvi […]
12/22/2001
“On December 22 [2001], a British passenger named Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight carrying 197 people from Paris to Miami by detonating explosives in his shoes. Fortunately, an alert flight attendant noticed his suspicious behavior, and passengers overwhelmed him before he could light the fuse. The plane was diverted to […]
12/22/2001
In Afghanistan, Hamid “Karzai was sworn in [as president] on December 22 [2001] in a solemn ceremony attended by some two thousand tribal chiefs, warlords, [Central Command leader] General [Tommy] Franks, and the world’s diplomats. The new president gave an enormously moving speech that brought tears to the eyes of many grizzled warriors. ‘Our country […]
12/21/2001
Former CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “Sometimes the threats mentioned would strike you as absurd, and then al-Qa’ida would do something to convince you that nothing was out of the range of possibility. Who, for example, would have thought that exploding footwear could be a major air travel problem–until, that is, December 21, 2001, when […]
12/20/2001
“The following are excerpts of a written statement [issued on December 20, 2001] by the U.S. treasury secretary Paul O’Neill upon the designation of Umma Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) as a terrorist organization. UTN was ostensibly established as a charity by several Pakistani nuclear scientists including Dr. [Sultan Bashir-ud-din] Mahmood. ‘Today, we are blocking the assets of […]
12/20/2001
On December 20, 2001, President Bush said of bin Laden: ” ‘There was a significant difference in my attitude after Sept. 11. I was not on point, but I knew he was a menace, and I knew he was a problem. …I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan […]
12/20/2001
In December 2001, “a high-ranking Iraqi engineer named Adnan Saeed defected to the United States and told American officials about the locations and details of sites that Saddam was still using to store chemical, biological and nuclear materials. According to the New York Times [on December 20, 2001], ‘Mr. Saeed said that several of the […]