“In August 2001, either NSA [National Security Agency] or Britain’s GCHQ [Government Communications Headquarters] intercepted a telephone call from one of bin Laden’s chief lieutenants, Abu Zubaida, to an al Qaeda operative believed to have been in Pakistan. The intercept centered on an operation that was to take place in September. At about the same […]
Category: quotes
8/15/2001
” ‘You’re basically asking for the overthrow of the Taliban,’ an incredulous midlevel State Department officer told [future Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s brother] Qayum Karzai in one meeting that August [2001]. ‘I’m not sure if our government is prepared to do that.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – […]
8/15/2001
“According to an eyewitness in the al Qaeda camp at the time, an Australian convert to Islam, Osama had told his closest advisers and [Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad] Omar in August 2001 that an attack on America was imminent, but many of his aides objected to the idea as too dangerous. Osama decided to go […]
8/15/2001
“Three weeks before the [9/11] attack [in August 2001]…a French-Algerian named Habib Zacarias Moussaoui booked hours on a flight simulator at an aviation school in Minneapolis. He wanted to learn, in a hurry, how to fly a jet–landing procedures didn’t matter–and he paid for everything in cash. The flight instructor became suspicious and informed the […]
8/15/2001
“Due to penetration of Pakistan’s nuclear establishment by Britain’s MI6 [foreign intelligence service], the CIA learned astonishing information about contact between Pakistani nuclear scientists and al Qaeda. Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, two retired nuclear scientists from the stable run by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, met with […]
8/15/2001
“In August 2001, the intelligence community obtained information about a plot to bomb a U.S. embassy in Nairobi [Kenya] from an airplane or crash the airplane into it. The intelligence community learned that two people who were reportedly acting on instructions from bin Laden met in October 2000 to discuss this plot.” [The 15th of […]
8/15/2001
“In August 2001, [future President of Afghanistan] Hamid Karzai, along with two other prominent Pashtun emigres, Abdul Haq and Gen. Rahim Wardak (who was to become Afghan defense minister in 2004), went to London to meet with British officials. Karzai’s message was simple: Osama bin Laden was making key decisions for the Taliban, and al […]
8/15/2001
” ‘We are going to be struck soon,’ [CIA Counterterrorist Center Director] Cofer Black told the Pentagon’s classified annual conference on counterterrorism [on August 15, 2001] nine days later [than the August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing]. ‘Many Americans are going to die, and it could be in the U.S.” – Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, […]
8/15/2001
CIA Director George Tenet provided a written statement for the 9/11 Commission on March 24, 2004. He wrote: “We documented the increased threat in the intelligence analysis that we provided to senior policymakers. We cited plots in the Arabian Peninsula and Europe, and ultimately in August 2001 we warned about Bin Ladin’s desire to conduct […]
8/15/2001
“In August [15] of 2001, FBI headquarters denied its Minneapolis field office permission to search the laptop computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, an Al Qaeda operative training for a second wave of attacks.” – Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, Page 17 […]