On September 11, 2001, “The 9/11 teams realised that their scheme might be compromised if team members were caught trying to smuggle illicit knives on board the planes and so carried box-cutter knives less than four inches long which were permitted by the Federal Aviation Authority. In addition to pepper sprays, these boxcutting knives were […]
Category: quotes
9/11/2001
A few hours after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush spoke with CIA briefer Michael Morell. ” ‘Who do you think did this?’ Bush asked. ‘There are two terror states capable, Iran and Iraq, but both have everything to lose and nothing to gain,’ Morell said. ‘If I had to guess I’d […]
9/10/2001
“We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers [Since August 6, 2001] of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford, Texas, on August 17 and participated […]
9/10/2001
“In late 2000, [Director of Central Intelligence] George Tenet recognized the deficiency of strategic analysis against al Qaeda. To tackle the problem within the CTC [Counterterrorism Center] he appointed a senior manager, who briefed him in March 2001 on ‘creating a strategic assessment capability.’ The CTC established a new strategic assessments branch during July 2001. […]
9/10/2001
FBI Director Louis Freeh said, of the FBI’s unpreparedness for 9/11: “We were in the Dark Ages. The most basic wonders of the computer revolution had not yet arrived at the Bureau. My guess is that the average twelve-year-old sitting at a desktop PC anywhere in America on the evening of September 10, 2001, had […]
9/10/2001
Then-CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “On September 10 [2001], a source we [CIA] were jointly running with a Middle Eastern country went to see his foreign handler and basically told him that something big was about to go down. The handler dismissed him. Had we known it at the time, however, it would have sounded […]
9/10/2001
“By September 10, 2001, CIA had more than one hundred sources and subsources, and relationships with eight tribal networks spread across Afghanistan.” – George Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm, Page 208 […]
9/10/2001
“Whoever [Mustafa Ahmed] al-Hisawi is, it is a matter of record that someone with a Dubai identity card with his name on it opened a bank account at a Standard and Chartered Bank branch in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Al-Hisawi used that bank account to transmit tens of thousands of dollars to Mohammed […]
9/10/2001
On September 10, 2001, Attorney General John “Ashcroft submitted his first budget. He asked for increased funds for sixty-eight programs in his Department of Justice, not one of which directly involved counterterrorism. Even worse, he rejected a request by the FBI for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents. He also proposed a $65 […]
9/10/2001
“Osama bin Laden telephoned his mother in Syria the day before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks [September 10, 2001] to tell her that he could not meet her there because ‘something big’ was imminent that would end their communications for a long time, a senior foreign official said tonight [October 2, 2001].” – Patrick E. […]