“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 […]
Category: quotes
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 […]
8/14/2001
Potential hijacker Zacarias “Moussaoui’s classroom instructor knew that affluent hobbyists sometimes signed up for simulator training even if they didn’t have a [pilot’s] license, but Moussaoui’s decision to rush the training, and to ask so many questions about things like protocol for communicating with air traffic controllers, created worry. At a routine staff meeting on […]
8/13/2001
“On August 13 [2001], [potential hijacker] Zacarias Moussaoui started his new [flight] training [near Minneapolis, Minnesota]. …Two days later, the school called the local FBI office, telling agents they had what they thought was a potential hijacker on their hands. …By the next afternoon, the FBI was at the school. By nightfall, Moussaoui was in […]
8/11/2001
“The Washington Post story the next day [August 11, 2001] on page A18 characterized the attack [on air defense sites in Iraq] as one of ‘relatively limited scope’ and business-as-usual. ‘Yesterday’s strikes appeared to continue the Clinton-era pattern of hitting Iraqi air defenses every six months or so.’ “ – Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, […]
8/10/2001
“On August 10 [2001], US and British jets bombed three air defense sites in Iraq, the largest strikes since February.” – Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Page 23 […]
8/8/2001
President George W. Bush’s comments on decisions being made with the help of the Secretary of Defense: “I’ve got a lot of national security concerns that we’re working on — Iraq; Macedonia, very worrisome right now. Kind of a blowup last night and yesterday it looked like we had a peaceful resolution; it’s now in doubt. […]
8/7/2001
“Although the [August 7, 2001] SEIB [Senior Executive Intelligence Brief] repeated the title of [the August 6] PDB [Presidential Daily Brief, titled ‘Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.‘], it did not contain the reference to the hijackings, the alert in New York, the alleged casing of buildings in New York, the threat phoned in […]