“In the five-and-a-half years between his [Osama bin Laden’s] return to Afghanistan and September 11, 2001, his training camps processed up to twenty thousand militants from around the world. Only a fraction received advanced terrorist training; it was from those ranks that he drew suicide bombers for overseas assignment, troops for his own protective unit […]
Category: quotes
9/11/2001
“Responding to news reporting that the Taliban had aided the 9/11 plotters, Taliban leaders issued a cynical statement [on the evening of September 11, 2001]. ‘Mullah Omar condemns this act,’ it said. ‘Mullah Omar says Osama is not responsible. We have brought peace to this country [Afghanistan] and we want peace in all countries.’ ” […]
9/11/2001
At 9:42 a.m. on September 11, 2001, the Air Traffic Control Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, “learned from news reports that a plane had struck the Pentagon. The Command Center’s national operations manager, Ben Sliney, ordered all FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] facilities to instruct all aircraft to land at the nearest airport. This was an […]
9/11/2001
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 […]
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 […]