“At 12:05 p.m. [on September 11, 2001], CIA director George Tenet called to report that just fifteen minutes after the Pentagon had been hit, the National Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted a phone call between a known associate of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and someone in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. The bin […]
Category: quotes
9/11/2001
“[I Want] best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden]. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.’ [quote from] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s reaction to news of the September 11 attacks, as of 2:40 p.m. that day, according to notes […]
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
“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. […]
9/10/2001
From October 2000 until September 10, 2001, “a British banking compliance company had profiles on 15 of them [the 9/11 hijackers] in its files of high-risk people. Banking clients had access to the information, but the profiles evidently were never seen by U.S. agencies that might have spotted something in them to act on. …Swiss […]
9/10/2001
“…on September 10, 2001, there were fewer FBI agents assigned to counterterrorism than there had been in [August] 1998 at the time of the East Africa embassy bombings.” – Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Page 161 […]
9/10/2001
“It was not until Sept. 10 [2001] that [President] Mr. Bush’s national security aides approved a three-phase strategy to eliminate Al Qaeda. The plan, which was to unfold over three to five years, envisioned a mission to the Taliban in Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was based; increased diplomatic pressure; and covert action. Military strikes might […]
9/10/2001
Attorney General John “Ashcroft had the bad timing–on September 10 [2001]–of rejecting the FBI’s request for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 additional analysts, and 54 extra translators.” – Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Page 175 […]