“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 […]
Category: quotes
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 […]
8/15/2001
In August 2001, potential hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui raised concerns at his flight school in Egan, Minnesota, “after attempting to rush his flight training, calling his desire to fly a jumbo jet an ‘ego-boosting thing,’ and asking instructors how much damage a hijacker could do flying a fully loaded 747. Fortunately, an alert flight manager…contacted the […]
8/15/2001
“[I]n August [2001], the Central Intelligence Agency issued a secret report warning senior policy makers that Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden’s network, hoped to launch a strike against the domestic United States. The report combined both new and older intelligence gathered by the C.I.A. and other American intelligence agencies to depict Mr. bin Laden’s long-term […]
8/15/2001
On August 15, 2001, two FBI agents interviewed suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui and asked FBI headquarters for a warrant to inspect Moussaoui’s laptop. “But headquarters refused the request because there was no ‘probable cause’ foundation that a crime had been committed.” – Bill Gertz, Breakdown, Pages 30-31 […]
8/15/2001
“The United States received intelligence a month before Sept. 11 [August 2001] that bin Laden’s right-hand man, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, was receiving medical treatment at a clinic in San’a, Yemen… The Bush administration rejected a plan to capture him as officials could not be 100 percent sure the patient was Al-Zawahiri, sources said.” [The 15th of […]
8/15/2001
“In a classified chronology submitted to Congress in early 2002, the CIA stated that it had tracked terrorists Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi to the United States in early 2001, but failed to notify the FBI and other government agencies about the connections of the two men to al Qaeda. …the CIA had said it […]
8/15/2001
“Israeli intelligence services reportedly met with CIA and FBI officials in August [2001] and warned of an imminent large-scale attack on the U.S. There ‘were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi involvement,’ a senior Israeli official later told London’s Sunday Telegraph [on September 16, 2001].” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] […]