“On September 9, 2001, Osama bin Laden repaid [Taliban leader] Mullah [Mohammad] Omar for all his help in hosting al Qaeda and all the difficulty it had led to. In a brilliant operation, the al Qaeda organization killed Omar’s number-one enemy in Afghanistan, the military leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud. …Bin Laden […]
Category: quotes
9/9/2001
“When the Senate Armed Services Committee proposed to strip $600 million from the missile defense budget, and spend it instead on counterterrorism priorities identified by military commanders, [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld said he would recommend a veto. The veto threat came on September 9 [2001].” – Barton Gellman, Angler, Page 113 […]
9/9/2001
“Al-Qaeda’s masterstroke in assassinating [Northern Alliance leader] Ahmad Shah Massoud [on September 9, 2001] just two days before the September 11 operation certainly was a calculated maneuver to curry favor with [the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad] Omar. Massoud’s death removed the last major impediment to Omar’s total control of Afghanistan, which, in turn, […]
9/9/2001
“On September 9 [2001], two days before the hijackings, a Maryland state trooper cited [9/11 hijacker Ziad] Jarrah for speeding on Interstate 95 in Cecil County, near the Delaware state line. …Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley has said local law enforcement officials should have been told by the FBI that Jarrah was on a CIA watch […]
9/9/2001
“In September 2001 [Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf dispatched [Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) head] General Mahmud [Ahmad] to Washington to try to soften the [U.S./Pakistani] relationship by convincing his CIA counterparts and the [Bush] administration that the Taliban were misunderstood. They were, he argued, simple Pashtuns and Afghan nationalists who could deliver law and order. Their extreme […]
9/9/2001
On September 9, 2001, “Two days before the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks, Osama bin Laden telephoned his adoptive mother and told her that he would not be in touch again for some time. ‘In two days you’re going to hear big news and you’re not going to hear from me for a while,’ […]
9/9/2001
“On September 9 [2001], the leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, had granted an interview in his bungalow near the Tajikstan border with two men whom the Northern Alliance leader had been told were Arab journalists. The supposed reporter and cameraman–actually al Qaeda assassins–then set off a bomb, riddling Massoud’s chest with shrapnel. […]
9/9/2001
On September 9, 2001, head of the Northern Alliance “Ahmed Shah Massoud agreed to see two Arab television journalists who had been waiting in his camp for nine days for an interview. Massoud was without doubt the greatest of the Afghan commanders. …He was the best hope Afghanistan had of a moderate Islamist alternative to […]
9/7/2001
“On Friday, Sept. 7 [2001], the State Department issued a worldwide alert warning ‘American citizens may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups with links to [Osama bin Laden’s] al Qaeda organization.’ ” – David Ruppe, “Who Did It? U.S. Searches for Terror Clues; Analysts See Signs of Osama Bin Laden,” ABC […]
9/5/2001
“Intelligence agents based in Iraq claimed that Saddam himself had retreated to one of his heavily fortified bunkers in the family fiefdom of Tikrit, in northern Iraq. …The clear implication was that Saddam had retreated to Tikrit in early September 2001 because he had prior warning of the September 11 attacks…” [The 5th of the […]