“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 […]
Category: quotes
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 […]
9/11/2001
“On 9/11 [2001], despite claims by former FBI directors and officials that fighting terrorism was a major priority, the FBI had only 6 percent of its workforce assigned to counterterrorism.” – Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Page xiii […]
9/11/2001
According to John Farmer, Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, on September 11, 2001, “The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] had an institutional exposure in its handling of United 93 that it did not have with respect to its handling of United 175. Its failure for nearly 30 minutes, and after the attacks had been under […]
9/11/2001
“According to the [9/11] Commission, Boston flight control contacts NEADS/NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command’s Northeast Air Defense Sector] at this time [8:38 a.m. on September 11, 2001] to inform them that AA [American Airlines Flight] 11 has been hijacked. Lt. Colonel Dawne Deskins, the mission crew chief for Vigilant Guardian [a war game taking […]
9/11/2001
“On the basis of the interrogation of suspected Al Qaeda agents, Indian intelligence believes that Al Qaeda had infiltrated a suicide team into Britain to attack the Houses of Parliament. In addition to striking Westminster in an airborne attack, they also had plans to attack Tower Bridge on the river Thames, but the latter target […]
9/11/2001
On the morning of September 11, 2001, a military aide reported to Vice President Dick Cheney that the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 was approaching Washington, D.C., and asked whether it should be shot down. “In ‘the time it takes a batter to swing,’ as [vice presidential Chief of Staff] Scooter Libby put it, Cheney […]
9/11/2001
On board Air Force One at 10:05 a.m. on September 11, 2001: “President Bush talked with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice over the phone. ‘We are going to take care of this. When we find out who did this, they are not going to like me as president. Somebody […]
9/11/2001
On September 11, 2001, President Bush dictated to diary: “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century took place today.” – Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Page 24 […]
9/11/2001
“How the U.S. intelligence community…missed the September 11 [2001] attacks is a story of a system hamstrung by bad politics, poor leadership, and bureaucratic ineptitude. But the most important problem…is the lack of accountability.” – Bill Gertz, Breakdown, Pages 4-5 […]