“After the National Security Council meeting that morning [September 26, 2001], [President] Bush asked [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld to stay behind. The two talked alone in the Oval Office. ‘I want you to develop a plan to invade Iraq,’ Bush said. ‘Do it outside the normal channels. Do it creatively so we don’t have […]
Category: quotes
9/26/2001
President Bush “was not interested in creating a government to replace the Taliban should it fall as a result of American military strikes or internal unrest. ‘We’re not into nation building,’ he said. ‘We’re focused on justice.’ ” – Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, “Bush Steps Up Appeal to Afghans to Rid Their Country of […]
9/26/2001
CIA Chief George “Tenet dispatched the CIA’s covert paramilitary team, code-named Jawbreaker, into Afghanistan 15 days after the [9/11] attacks [September 26, 2001]. Bombing began 11 days later, on October 7, 2001. The campaign represented some of the CIA’s finest moments after 9/11…” – Bob Woodward, State of Denial, Page 78 […]
9/25/2001
“On September 25, 2001, the Office of Legal Counsel issued another in a series of secret legal memos. …The memo, like [President] Bush’s address of a few days earlier, unapologetically crossed the line that Congress had drawn. …Some of the arguments that [Office of Legal Counsel Deputy Chief John] Yoo made…were astounding. …that Congress had […]
9/25/2001
“A senior law enforcement official said that 17 of the 19 hijackers were not known to intelligence or law enforcement officials before the Sept. 11 attacks. Two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf alhamzi, were placed on the government’s official watch list for suspected terrorists before the attacks.” – Lowell Bergman and Don Van […]
9/25/2001
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul “Wolfowitz is said to be wedded to the position that Mr. bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network could not have carried out the [9/11] attack without Saddam Hussein’s help, the [senior Bush Administration] officials said.” – Elaine Sciolino, “U.S. Prepares to Brief NATO on Strategy to Fight bin Laden,” […]
9/25/2001
On September 25, 2001, “Interpol, the international police agency, issued a bulletin for the arrest of [al Qaeda second-in-command] Ayman al-Zawahiri.” – John F. Burns, “Pakistan Fights U.S. Move Linked to Anti-Taliban Drive,” The New York Times, Sep. 26, 2001 […]
9/25/2001
“Today [September 25, 2001], for the second time in 24 hours, a message from [Taliban leader] Mullah [Mohammad] Omar surfaced, this time from a pro-Taliban news agency, the Afghan Islamic Press. The agency…presented the Sept. 11 attacks as a revenge for American policies toward Muslims. ‘The American people must know that the sad events that […]
9/25/2001
On September 25, 2001, “John Yoo, a Justice Department lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote an internal memorandum that argued that the government might use ‘electronic surveillance techniques and equipment that are more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies in order to intercept telephonic communications and observe the movement […]
9/25/2001
On September 25, 2001, Deputy Chief in the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo sent a memorandum to the White House, titled ‘The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Operations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting Them.’ In it, he “collected over one hundred authorities–from the Constitution, statutes, presidential practice, and judicial opinions–to show that the […]