Former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel wrote, on September 11, 2001, “The attacks had all the hallmarks of al Qaeda and were preceded by months of warning that an assault on America was coming. Gary Schroen, one of my colleagues who led the first CIA team into Afghanistan after 9/11 to hunt for bin Laden, remembers […]
Category: quotes
9/11/2001
Author John Miller wrote: ” ‘By the time the Towers collapsed [on September 11, 2001] in a cloud of metal and dust and humanity, I knew this had been the work of bin Laden. …It had been a long time coming. I was part of the small club, regarded by many as alarmists, who had […]
9/11/2001
“On September 11, 2001, the FBI’s annual technology budget under the Clinton administration was actually $36 million less than the last [George H.W.] Bush budget eight years earlier. The FBI’s information infrastructure had been starved, and by September 11 it was collapsing from budgetary neglect. On September 11, 2001, and for a considerable time afterward, […]
9/11/2001
On September 11, 2001, “In the White House bunker, reports began coming in at 10:02 about an inbound aircraft, presumably hijacked. The reports were coming from the Secret Service, which was talking to someone at FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] Headquarters. Unbeknownst to the Secret Service and the White House, FAA Headquarters may have been following […]
9/11/2001
At 8:20 a.m. on September 11, 2001, “Boston flight control decides that Flight 11 has probably been hijacked. The protocol calls for NORAD to be notified immediately, but the [9/11] Commission says that the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] doesn’t inform the North American Air Defense Command until 8:38 a.m., eighteen minutes later.” – Peter Lance, […]
9/11/2001
“Al Qaeda consistently inflicts the maximum number of casualties with the minimum loss to itself. The attacks of 11 September 2001 had the highest bomber/casualty ratio, with nineteen suicide attackers claiming 2,955 lives–an average 155.5 victims per attacker.” – Abdel Bari Atwan, The Secret History of al Qaeda, Page 99 […]
9/11/2001
” ‘We don’t foresee an attack against us,’ said the Taliban foreign minister [Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil on the evening of September 11, 2001], ‘because there is no reason for it.’ ” – Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, Page 362 […]
9/11/2001
Shortly after hearing of the attacks on the morning of 9/11, President Bush said, via phone conversation to Vice President Dick Cheney: ” ‘Sounds like we have a minor war going on here, I heard about the Pentagon. We’re at war…somebody’s going to pay.’ ” – 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, Page 39 […]
9/11/2001
“The attacks of 9/11, as all have come to know those events, also marked the second most violent day in U.S. history, with 2,793 deaths.” – Bruce Riedel, The Search for Al Qaeda, Page 1 […]
9/11/2001
“September 11 [2001] was the culmination of a long trail of American intelligence failures both at home and abroad–an almost bewildering array of mistakes, missteps, and missed opportunities caused by warring governmental cultures, bureaucratic incompetence and neglect, lack of imagination, and, perhaps, most tragic of all, a failure of leadership at the highest levels of […]