Following the November 2001 investigation by the U.S. embassy in Niger into sales of uranium from Niger to Iraq, “State Department analysts…concluded that the Niger deal was a fraud. In December 2001, Greg Thielmann, director for strategic proliferation and military affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), reviewed Iraq’s WMD program […]
Category: quotes
12/15/2001
“In his memoir Jawbreaker, published in 2005, [top CIA Commander Gary] Berntsen, a Bush loyalist, tells of how his teams found bin Laden and his remaining entourage in the [Tora Bora] mountains of the Afghan-Pakistani border [in December 2001] and begged Centcom [Central Command] for eight hundred U.S. Army Rangers to ‘block a possible Al-Qaeda […]
12/15/2001
In late October 2001, “the Czech interior minister set off an international furor when he said that an Iraqi intelligence officer had met in Prague with Mohammed Atta, the suspected mastermind of the [9/11] attacks, just five months before the hijackings [April 2001]. …But by December [2001], Czech and American officials backed off, saying that […]
12/15/2001
In December 2001, “the American military learned that Bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora, a dense mountain range in southeastern Afghanistan. …Instead of sending thousands of American soldiers to go into the mountain range to capture or kill Bin Laden, [President] Bush did not send one single American soldier. He only dispatched forty American […]
12/15/2001
“Muhammad Musa, a laconic, massively built commander…led six hundred Afghan soldiers on the Tora Bora front lines [in Afghanistan in December 2001]. …Musa said he was not impressed by the American forces on the ground. ‘They were not involved in the fighting,’ he said. ‘There were six American soldiers with us, U.S. Special Forces. They […]
12/14/2001
“SIGINT [signals intelligence] coming out of NSA [National Security Agency] and intercepts collected by frontline U.S. military intelligence units proved that bin Laden was indeed at Tora Bora [in Afghanistan, in December 2001]. The official history of the U.S. Special Operations Command indicates that U.S. Special Forces continued to collect hard ‘all-source’ intelligence, most of […]
12/13/2001
“The [Bush] administration’s announcement of U.S. withdrawal [from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia] on December 13, 2001, marked the first time in the nuclear era that the United States had unilaterally abandoned a major arms-control pact. ‘I have concluded that the ABM Treaty hinders our government’s ability to develop ways to protect our […]
12/12/2001
According to Commander Mohammed Musa, an Afghan militia leader who battled al Qaeda elements at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, on December 12, 2001: ” ‘Haji Zaman (another Afghan commander) told me about a ceasefire with the Arabs. Al Qaeda wanted to escape from a particular village; Ghalanjali village in the mountains. Al Qaeda said, *We want […]
12/12/2001
According to a Der Spiegel article which was quoted in The Washington Post on December 12, 2001, Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef said, regarding 9/11: ” ‘so far we’ve received no evidence or documents from the U.S. authorities that justify the suspicion or accusation’ that Saudis were involved.” – Jonathan Randal, Osama, Page 274 […]
12/12/2001
“On December 12 [2001], a defining moment came in the Tora Bora [Afghanistan] battle, and al-Qaeda would swiftly exploit it. Haji Zaman Gamsharik, one of the Afghan warlords leading the attack against al-Qaeda, had opened negotiations with members of the group for a surrender agreement. ‘They talked on the radio with Haji Zaman,’ an Afghan […]