According to a January 20, 2002, article in The Washington Post, in January 2001, outgoing Deputy National Security Advisor General Don Kerrick warned the incoming Bush Administration about the threat posed by al Qaeda. “As a courtesy, he sent a memo to the NSC [National Security Council] front office on ‘things you need to pay […]
Category: quotes
1/15/2001
“Before September 11 [2001], General [Michael] Hayden had been especially eager to counter charges that the NSA [National Security Agency] illegally spied on E-mail and other communications of Americans. ‘I’m here to tell you that we don’t get close to the Fourth Amendment,’ he said, referring to the constitutional provision prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure…in […]
1/15/2001
“In January [2001], the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] issued an advisory to airlines and airport personnel warning that terrorists might try to hijack or destroy American aircraft. It was the first of fifteen such warnings issued in the nine months leading up to September 11.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes […]
1/15/2001
Outgoing National Security Advisor “Sandy Berger, who felt the first President Bush had failed to arrange adequate transition briefings on national security for the incoming Clinton team, vowed to run a handoff of the sort he would have wished to receive. The ‘number one’ issue on his agenda, he recalled [in his September 19, 2002 […]
1/14/2001
” ‘His [Osama bin Laden’s] arrest, which we dearly hope for, is only one step along the road of the many things we need to do to eliminate the network of organizations,’ said Richard A. Clarke, the top White House counterterrorism official.” – Stephen Engelberg, “One Man and a Global Web of Violence,” The New […]
1/10/2001
“[O]utgoing secretary of defense, William Cohen, released a Pentagon report in January [10] 2001 asserting that Iraq had rebuilt factories used to produce chemical and biological warfare agents.” – Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War Over Iraq, Page 33 […]
1/10/2001
On January 10, 2001, “a Department of Energy advisory group chaired by former Senate majority leader Howard Baker [R-TN] and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler concluded that the ‘most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be […]
1/10/2001
“In a report released January 10, 2001, the outgoing U.S. secretary of defense, William S. Cohen, warned that Iraq had rebuilt at least its weapons infrastructure and might have begun covertly producing some chemical or biological agents. A spokesman at the British Foreign Office said they shared the U.S. suspicions (which were not new) regarding […]
1/10/2001
“An editorial in the Washington Post [on January 10, 2001] ten days before [President Bill] Clinton left office noted: ‘Yemeni officials say they have developed substantial evidence that the [October 12, 2000, USS Cole] bombing was ordered by the Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden, and financed and coordinated by Muhammad Omar al-Harazi, a bin Laden […]
1/10/2001
“Early in [January 10] 2001, [Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George] Tenet and Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt gave an intelligence briefing to President-elect Bush, Vice President-elect [Dick] Cheney, and [incoming National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice; it included the topic of al Qaeda. Pavitt recalled conveying that Bin Ladin was one of the greatest […]