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On February 26, 1986, “the Reagan administration decided to ship in Stinger ground-to-air missiles [to the mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan]; it would take another seven months for rebels to be trained, equipped, and effective in shooting down Soviet helicopters. Russian officials later claimed that the new weapon actually slowed the troop withdrawal. They also acknowledged that it had forced them to fly their helicopters and aircraft at far higher altitudes and thus lose their effectiveness on the ground.”

 – Roy Gutman, How We Missed the Story, Page 22

In an April 8, 1986, article in The Washington Post, a Reagan Administration aide commented on the potential misuse of Stinger missiles sold to the mujadhadeen. ” ‘Some of these guys are a lot closer politically, religiously, and philosophically to [Iran’s Ayatollah Ruholla] Khomeini than they are to us,’ the aide said. ‘There is concern that one of these guys could show up in Rome aiming a Stinger at a jumbo jet.’ ”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 109

On April 5, 1986, “a bomb tore through a discotheque in West Berlin, killing an American soldier. The Reagan administration quickly identified Muammar Gadhafi of Libya as a sponsor of the attack and warned that Libya was encouraging follow-up attacks on American targets. Ten days later [April 15, 1986], more than 100 American bombs rained down on Libya. The Reagan Administration described them as the first shots in a broader ‘war against terrorism.’ ”

 – Stephen F. Hayes, Cheney, Pages 486-487

On April 15, 1986, “President [Ronald] Reagan ordered a series of air strikes on Libya. U.S. intelligence indicated that strongman Moammar Kadafi had sponsored a terrorist attack on a German nightclub popular with off-duty American servicemen, in which one soldier had been killed and more than sixty wounded. The United States responded with 200 aircraft dropping approximately sixty tons of bombs. The President’s message to terrorists around the world couldn’t have been clearer. Such attacks on American citizens were going to be met with harsh retaliation.”

 – Ricardo S. Sanchez with Donald T. Phillips, Wiser in Battle, Page 53

On April 5, 1986, Libyan agents bombed a nightclub in West Berlin, Germany, killing two American servicemen and wounding scores more. “…the U.S. [retaliation] bombing of Libya in [April 15] 1986 failed to deter Libyan-sponsored terrorism. Indeed, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December [21] 1988 by terrorists whom the United States and the United Kingdom have identified as Libyan intelligence agents was probably carried out in retaliation against the U.S. raid on Tripoli, which killed several dozen civilians.”

 – Yonah Alexander, ed., Combating Terrorism, Page 45

“On July 29 [1986], Israeli counterterrorism adviser Amiran Nir briefed [Vice President George] Bush at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and told him that Iran had agreed to release American hostages in exchange for four thousand missiles.”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 74

On July 30, 1986, Vice President George “Bush went to Jordan to perform the most delicate part of his [Middle East] mission, initiating the transfer of military intelligence to Saddam. According to two Reagan administration officials, Bush told King Hussein that Iraq needed to be more aggressive in the war with Iran and asked that Saddam Hussein be urged to use his air force against targets inside Iran.”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 75

“…on August 4 [1986], [Vice President George] Bush met in Cairo [Egypt] with President Hosni Mubarak and asked him to pass on to Saddam Hussein the same message he had given King Hussein of Jordan [that he be more aggressive in the war with Iran and use his air force]. Saddam had previously rejected U.S. advice to escalate the bombing, but now, because of the cost of the war, he desperately needed American money and weapons. In addition, CIA officials began directly providing the Iraqi military both with highly classified tactical intelligence and technical equipment to receive satellite intelligence so Iraq could assess the effects of its air strikes on Iran. During the 48 hours after Bush’s meeting with Mubarak, the Iraqi air force flew 359 missions.”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 75

In September 1986, President Ronald Reagan formed “an interagency task force, the Alien Border Control Committee (ABCC), whose purpose was to block entry of suspected terrorists and to deport militants who either had come into the country illegally or had overstayed their visas. The CIA and FBI joined the ABCC effort.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Page 17

On October 1, 1986, President Ronald “Reagan signed into law the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which fundamentally changed the command relationship structure between the military and the civilian executive branch of the government. …Unfortunately, senior military leaders in the Pentagon were bitterly opposed to the changes. Essentially, the new legislation had the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reporting directly to the President as well as the Secretary of Defense. Prior to this, the Chairman’s position on the Joint Chiefs rotated regularly among the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, which tended to result in favoritism toward the military service in power at the time. The new law also removed the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the formal chain of command for regional combatant commanders. Henceforth, combatant commanders would report directly to the secretary of defense. And finally, the new legislation required the President of the United States to annually outline a national security strategy and present it to Congress.”

 – Ricardo S. Sanchez with Donald T. Phillips, Wiser in Battle, Page 53

Harken Energy, a small oil company owned by international billionaire investor George Soros, purchased a failing oil company owned by George W. Bush in November 1, 1986, and put him on the board.

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 117

Regarding the al Qaeda terrorists’ infiltration of the American military, journalist Peter Bergen said, “In November [13] 1986 [Egyptian Islamic Jihad sleeper agent] Ali Mohamed enlisted in the U.S. Army for a three-year stint. …Special Forces soldiers are dispatched to tackle the riskiest missions. …So Fort Bragg is pretty much the last place in the world you’d expect to find a bin Laden operative. Yet Ali Mohamed, it turns out, was an indispensable player in al-Qaeda.”

 – Peter Bergen, Holy War, Inc., Pages 130-131

During January 1987, “The United States Commerce Department approved exports to Iraq’s SCUD missile program. Gary Milhollin, the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control appeared before the Subcommittee on Technology and National Security of the Joint Economic Committee on the 2nd of July, 1991. He stated that: ‘These exports allowed Iraq to extend SCUD range far enough to hit allied soldiers in Saudi Arabia and Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv and Haifa.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Philip Taylor, The War in Iraq, Page 12

The February 1987 issue of Jihad magazine featured an article by Abdullah Azzam, titled ‘Jihad…Not Terrorism.’ It read: ” ‘We say it frankly without playing with words or deception. Plain and straight:
1. That Jihad is a religious duty for the Umma [Muslims around the world], so as to free the people and give them Islamic justice and protection of the religion.
2. That the religion of God and the blessed religion is that of all of humanity, and we want to spread it all over all four corners of the world.
3. Jihad in God’s will means killing the infidels in the name of God and raising the banner of His name. And we do not want to make this great Jihad only words to be said on podiums, or articles to be published in newspapers. Jihad is done in the will of God only if you fight the infidel with the sword until he submits to Islam.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Pages 34-35

From a New York Times article on February 17, 1987: ” ‘President [Ronald] Reagan has faced more important but probably no tougher decisions than whether to seek ratification of revisions to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. If he said yes, that would improve protection for prisoners of war and civilians in wartime, but at the price of new legal protection for guerrillas and possible terrorists. He decided to say no, a judgment that deserves support.’ ”

 – Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, Page 561

On February 18, 1987, The Washington Post “approvingly quoted [President Ronald] Reagan: ‘[W]e must not, and need not, give recognition and protection to terrorist groups as a price for progress in humanitarian law.’ ”

 – Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, Page 561

On March 2, 1987, “Vice President George H.W. Bush meets with Iraqi ambassador Nizar Hamdoon and tells him that two requests by Iraq for sensitive American technology had been approved over objections from the Defense Department.’ ”

 – Philip Taylor, The War in Iraq, Page 12

On April 15, 1987, bin Laden’s mentor Abdallah Azzam published the book Join the Caravan, a call to jihad. In it, he quoted from the Prophet Muhammad: ” ‘The martyr is granted seven special favors by God: He is forgiven his sins with the first drop of his blood, he sees his place in Paradise, he is clothed in the raiment of faith, he is wedded with seventy-two wives from among the beautiful maidens of paradise, he is saved from the punishment of the grave, he is protected from the Great Terror (of the Day of Judgment), on his head is placed a crown of dignity…and he is granted intercession for seventy people of his household.’ ”

 – Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, eds., Al Qaeda In Its Own Words, Page 119

On April 15, 1987, bin Laden’s mentor Abdallah Azzam published the book Join the Caravan, a call to jihad. In it, he wrote: ” ‘Jihad, which entails donating one’s money and risking one’s life, is an individual duty in every place conquered by the unbelievers, and remains so until every piece of land that was once Muslim has been liberated.’ ”

 – Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, eds., Al Qaeda In Its Own Words, Page 121

“On April 17, 1987, Soviet helicopters and bomber jets hit Osama bin Laden’s new fortified compound at Jaji [Afghanistan], an assemblage of small crevices and caves dug into rocky hills above the border village. …The battle of Jaji marked the birth of Osama bin Laden’s public reputation as a warrior among Arab jihadists. …After Jaji he began a media campaign designed to publicize the brave fight waged by Arab volunteers who stood their ground against a superpower.”

 – Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Pages 162-163

“Jihad magazine, issue 53, April 1989, explained that accounts of the Jaji battle [in which Osama bin Laden’s Arab mujahideen prevailed over Soviet forces in Afghanistan] were a tremendous recruiting device for Arabs drawn to the Afghan jihad. ‘After the victorious battle of Masada [in Jaji] in [May] 1987 the youths started coming in waves. The number of young Arabs arriving in Afghanistan was getting much bigger.’ ” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Page 57

“The most significant manifestation of the pro-Iraqi bias of U.S. policy was the reaction to a Kuwaiti request in late 1986 that outsiders protect its [oil] tankers from the threat posed by Iran [during the Iran-Iraq War]. After months of diplomatic back-and-forth…the United States agreed to place American flags on eleven Kuwaiti tankers. The U.S. Navy would beef up its presence and activity in the region commensurate with that action. The Reagan administration went along with the ‘reflagging’ of tankers (Operation Earnest Will) in May 1987, but only after months of debate and in the face of considerable congressional opposition.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Page 28

“On May 17 [1987], the USS Stark was struck by two Iraqi missiles, with some three dozen U.S. sailors dying as a result. The Iraqis apologized and years later paid fair compensation, although whether it was in fact accidental remains unclear.”

 – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Page 29

“When the Iran-contra disclosures broke, [Vice President George H.W.] Bush told the Washington Post that he had not been aware that [Secretary of State George] Shultz and [Secretary of Defense Caspar] Weinberger had raised serious objections to selling weapons to Iran. ‘If I had sat there and heard George Shultz and Cap [Weinberger] express it strongly, maybe I would have had a stronger view. But when you don’t know something it’s hard to react. …We were not in the loop,’ he said. On August 6, 1987, the day the Post story appeared, Weinberger telephoned Shultz, incredulous that Bush had denied knowledge.”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 76

In September 1987, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard “Shevardnadze had asked for American cooperation in limiting the spread of ‘Islamic fundamentalism.’ The CIA and others in Washington discounted warnings from Soviet leadership about Islamic radicalism. The warnings were just a way to deflect attention from Soviet failings, American hard-liners decided.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Page 168

Incorporated in September 1987, Brooklyn’s Alkhifa Center “had become bin Laden’s main American branch and a hub for outposts in Atlanta, Chicago, Connecticut, and New Jersey. (In all, recruitment for the Afghan jihad took place in twenty-six states.)” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Peter Bergen, Holy War, Inc., Page 136

During a conversation on Afghanistan on December 4, 1987, KGB chief Vladimir “Kryuchkov assured [acting CIA director Robert] Gates that the Soviet Union now wanted to get out but needed CIA cooperation to find a political solution. He and other Soviet leaders were fearful about the rise to power in Afghanistan of another fundamentalist Islamic government, a Sunni complement to Shiite Iran.”

 – Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Page 169

“Apart from receiving the assistance of U.S. military intelligence, the Iraqis received direct military assistance from the United States, which sent teams of military advisers to assist the Iraqi top brass direct operations at the front [during a new offensive against the Iranians in February 1988].” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Con Coughlin, Saddam: His Rise and Fall, Page 222

The March 1988 National Intelligence Estimate, titled ‘USSR: Withdrawal from Afghanistan,’ read: ” ‘We judge that the [Soviet-backed Afghan President] Najibullah regime will not long survive the completion of Soviet withdrawal even with continued Soviet assistance,’ the estimate declared. ‘The regime may fall before withdrawal is complete.’ The replacement government the CIA expected ‘will be Islamic–possibly strongly fundamentalist, but not as extreme as Iran. …We cannot be confident of the new government’s orientation to the West; at best it will be ambivalent, and at worst it may be actively hostile, especially toward the United States.’ ” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Pages 172-173

“In the Kurdish town of Halabja one sunny day in March 1988, Iraqi military planes had dropped nerve gas bombs while army helicopters sprayed poison gas on villagers. More than 5,000 Kurds died that morning.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – L. Paul Bremer with Malcolm McConnell, My Year In Iraq, Page 53

“In March 1988, the CIA’s authoritative special national intelligence estimate stated, ‘We believe that the [Soviet-backed Afghan President] Najibullah regime will not long survive the completion of Soviet assistance. The regime may fall before withdrawal is complete.’ The estimate went on, ‘[D]espite infighting, we believe the resistance will retain sufficient supplies and military strength to ensure the demise of the communist government.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Roy Gutman, How We Missed the Story, Page 12

“In March [16] 1988, PUK [Patriotic Union of Kurdistan] and Iranian forces captured the town of Halabja [in Iraqi Kurdistan]. The Iraqi government forces retaliated by launching a massive chemical weapons attack on the townsfolk of Halabja. Nearly 5,000 civilians were gassed to death.”

 – Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, Page 37

In Iraq, “In 1988, as part of the Arabisation policy, to clear Kurds out of the country just north of Baghdad, there were several chemical weapons attacks on Kurdish villages in which 100,000 or more people were killed, including one on Halabja [on March 16, 1988] in which several thousand were eliminated in one day.”

 – Tony Blair, A Journey, Page 381

On March 16, 1988, “waves of Iraqi aircraft dropped gas canisters on the [Kurdish] city of Halabja, spraying its 50,000 residents with a misty fog of nerve and blister agents, including sarin, tabun, mustard gas, VX nerve agent, and perhaps the biological agent aflatoxin. There is no precise tally of the dead, but estimates range from 3,200 to 7,000, with 15,000 to 20,000 more injured, many of them horribly.”

 – Todd S. Purdum and The New York Times Staff, A Time of Our Choosing, Page 27

In April 1988, CIA Director William Webster “announced a redesigned Counterintelligence Center (CIC). Based in Langley [Virginia], its goal was to teach CIA and FBI agents how to recognize data that was useful to the other agency, and most important, to share it.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Page 24

One of the first uses of the term al Qaeda comes from an article Abdullah Azzam wrote for the April 1988 issue of Jihad magazine, titled ‘Al Qaeda al Sulbah’ (‘The Solid Base’). ” ‘Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and, while forcing its way into society, puts up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifices. There is no ideology, neither earthly nor heavenly, that does not require such a vanguard that gives everything it possesses in order to achieve victory for this ideology. It carries the flag all along the sheer endless and difficult path until it reaches its destination. This vanguard constitutes the solid base (al Qaeda al Sulbah) for the expected society.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Pages 74-75

“In April 1988, nine years and four months after the Soviets first invaded Afghanistan, representatives of Afghanistan, the USSR, the United States, and Pakistan met to sign an agreement calling for the Russian army to pull its forces out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to stop interfering in the other’s political and military affairs. And the United States agreed to end its support for the Afghan anti-Soviet groups.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing up Bin Laden, Page 77

“The Palestinian-Jordanian ideologue Abdullah Azzam conceptualised Al Qaeda in 1987. Defining its composition, aims, and purpose, he wrote in Al-Jihad, the principal journal of the Afghan Arabs [in April 1988]: ‘Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and, while focusing its way into society, puts up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifices. There is no ideology, neither earthly nor heavenly, that does not require such a vanguard that gives everything it possesses in order to achieve victory for this ideology. It carries the flag all along the sheer, endless and difficult path until it reaches its destination in the reality of life, since Allah has destined that it should make it and manifest itself. This vanguard constitutes Al-Qa’idah al-Sulbah for the expected society.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Rohan Gunaratna, Inside al Qaeda, Page 3

On the evening of July 3, 1988, National Security Advisor Colin Powell received a phone call from his deputy, John Negroponte, “relaying a Navy report that the USS Vincennes, escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers around the Iran-Iraq war zone, had just come under attack by an Iranian F-14 jet. The Vincennes had shot the plane down. …Twenty minutes later, Negroponte called back to say that the downed plane was not a jet fighter but an Iranian commercial Airbus on a regularly scheduled flight with 290 civilians aboard. All were presumed dead.”

 – Karen DeYoung, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, Pages 168-169

On July 3, 1988, “An American naval cruiser (USS Vincennes) shot down a civilian Iranian airplane (killing all 290 civilians on board) when crewmen confused it for a warplane, an explanation rejected by many in Iran.”

 – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Page 29

Regarding the formation of al Qaeda, “By the end of the Soviet occupation [of Afghanistan], an estimated 35,000 Muslim radicals from forty-three Islamic countries had joined the fight [against the Soviets]. …On August 11, 1988, bin Laden held a meeting in which he discussed the establishment of a new military group–al-Qaeda.”

 – Bob Graham with Jeff Nussbaum, Intelligence Matters, Page 28

“One fateful day in Peshawar [Pakistan], August 11, 1988, [bin Laden’s mentor] Sheikh Abdulla Azzam called a meeting to discuss the future of jihad. …One of Azzam’s objectives was to make sure that, in the event of an Afghan civil war, the Arabs were not involved. …He had come to agree with bin Laden about the need to establish a separate Arab group. …Although Azzam chaired the meeting, comments were directed at bin Laden, because everyone understood that the fate of jihad was in his hands, not theirs. …Few people in the room realized that al-Qaeda had already been secretly created some months before by a small group of bin Laden insiders.”

 – Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Pages 150-152

In August 1988, “Bin Laden founds al Qaeda.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Roy Gutman, How We Missed the Story, Page 263

“Osama’s mentor, Abdullah Azzam, made the case for an extensive foundation from which believers could launch their struggle for a perfect Islamic world. In full agreement, Osama called for the planning meeting that would be named al-Qaeda al-Askariya, which translates to ‘the military base,’ and was later shortened to al-Qaeda, ‘the base,’ or ‘the foundation.’ The first meeting was held at his family home in Peshawar, Pakistan, in August 1988.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing up Bin Laden, Page 78

According to the minutes of a three-day meeting at bin Laden’s house which began on August 18, 1988, military work for the mujahadeen was to be divided in two parts, according to duration:
“*Limited duration: They will go to Sada Camp [a camp on the Afghan-Pakistan border], then get trained and distributed on Afghan fronts, under supervision of the military council.
*Open [ended] duration: They enter a testing camp and the best brothers of them are chosen to enter Al Qaeda Al Askariya (the Military Base).”

 – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Pages 80-81

Regarding the origin of al Qaeda: on August 20, 1988, bin Laden and a small group of followers “met again to establish what they called al-Qaeda al-Askariya (the military base). ‘The mentioned al-Qaeda is basically an organized Islamic faction, its goal is to lift the word of God, to make His religion victorious,’ the secretary recorded in his minutes of the meeting.”

 – Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Page 152

On August 20, 1988, in one of the first meetings of al Qaeda, “The founders divided the military work, as they termed it, into two parts: ‘limited duration,’ in which the Arabs would be trained and placed with Afghan mujahideen for the remainder of the war [against the invading Soviets]; and ‘open duration,’ in which ‘they enter a testing camp and the best brothers of them are chosen.’ The graduates of this second camp would become members of the new entity, al-Qaeda.”

 – Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Pages 152-153

On August 20, 1988, in one of the first meetings of al Qaeda, “The secretary listed the requirements of those who sought to join this new organization:
*Members of the open duration.
*Listening and obedient.
*Good manners.
*Referred from a trusted source.
*Obeying statutes and instructions of al-Qaeda.”

 – Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Page 153

On August 20, 1988, the founders of al Qaeda “wrote an oath that the new members would recite upon joining al-Qaeda: ‘The pledge of God and his covenant is upon me, to energetically listen and obey the superiors who are doing this work, rising early in times of difficulty and ease.’ ”

 – Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Page 153

“When the Iran-Iraq war ended in [August 20] 1988, Saddam Hussein was in command of the fourth largest army in the world.”

 – Ricardo S. Sanchez with Donald T. Phillips, Wiser in Battle, Page 63

Omar bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden, wrote: “That 10-year [Iraq-Iran] war had begun on September 20, 1980…and had come to an exhausted conclusion on August 20, 1988… There was no clear victory for Iran or Iraq, and my father began monitoring the business of Iraq, believing that Saddam Hussein was so dissatisfied with the result of that war that he would not remain silent. My father had never been a supporter of Saddam Hussein due to the dictator’s secular rule over a Muslim land. My father often mocked Saddam Hussein for ‘not being a believer.’ There is no bigger insult for a Muslim. My father also scorned Saddam’s aggressive character, saying, ‘The leader of such a large army will never stop looking for war.’ “

 – Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing Up Bin Laden, Page 79

In The Iraq War Reader, Murray Waas wrote: “On August 20, 1988, the day the Iran-Iraq cease-fire went into effect, Saddam Hussein did not see a need to end the terror. Now he could mass his military forces against the troublesome Kurdish population in northern Iraq. Only five days later, Iraqi warplanes and helicopters dropped chemical weapons on villages throughout Iraqi Kurdistan.”

 – Eds. Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, The Iraq War Reader, Page 36

“On August 20, 1988, a ceasefire went into effect between Iran and Iraq. Just five days later [August 25, 1988], Saddam Hussein again staged poison-gas attacks against his own people in villages in Iraqi Kurdistan. None of this, however, changed the [Reagan] administration’s policy [of supporting Saddam with military aid].”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 80

From the Riegle Report, which was delivered to the Senate regarding the health of Gulf War veterans on February 9, 1994, “In April 1993, two U.S. based human rights organizations confirmed that they had found residues of chemical weapons used by the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein against [a] Kurdish village in northern Iraq in 1988. These groups, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, said they had used advanced analytical techniques to discover the presence of mustard gas and the nerve gas Sarin. Those chemical weapons reportedly were dropped by aircraft on August 25, 1988 and killed four people in the Kurdish village of Birjinni. Testimony from survivors of the Birjinni bombing, who said victims of the raids died writhing and coughing blood, led to accusations that Iraq had gassed its own citizens as part of a campaign against rebellious Kurds that killed tens of thousands.”

 – Donald Wayne Riegle, Jr. and Alfonse M. D’Amato, The Riegle Report, May 25, 1994, Page 35

The Anfal operations were a genocidal movement by the Iraqi regime against Kurds, which began in February 1988. “The entire civilian population of Kurdistan was in one way or another affected. Nearly one-and-a-half million people were displaced, and half the landmass of Kurdistan was depopulated. The savagery of the assaults on innocent civilians was unprecedented. Gas was the weapon of choice. In Bazi Gorge on 29 August, 1988, nearly 3,000 Kurds were gassed to death. All in all, the Anfal lead to the death of nearly 200,000 civilians in a planned, methodically executed, genocide.”

 – Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, Pages 37-38

In The Iraq War Reader, Murray Waas wrote: “In the first week of September [1988], Iraqi Minister of State Saadoun Hammadi, a member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, came to Washington to meet with Secretary of State Shultz. The State Department, uncharacteristically, condemned the use of gas. ‘The Secretary today conveyed to Iraqi Minister of State Hammadi our view that Iraq’s use of chemical weapons … is unjustifiable and abhorrent.’ Such violence, the statement went on to say, was ‘unacceptable to the civilized world.’ It was one of the few public condemnations of Iraq by the Reagan administration.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Eds. Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, The Iraq War Reader, Page 37

According to the minutes of al Qaeda’s secretary, ” ‘Work of al-Qaeda commenced on 9/10/1988 with a group of fifteen brothers.’ ”

 – Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Page 153

“The minutes of al-Qaeda’s founding meetings did not mention the United States as an enemy but rather described the group’s goals in the broadest and vaguest of terms: ‘to lift the word of God, to make His religion victorious.’ The minutes did note that the ‘work’ of al-Qaeda commenced on September 10, 1988.”

 – Peter Bergen, The Longest War, Page 18

“According to the Riegle Report, [on September 29, 1988] the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) sent a shipment of Anthrax and a source of Botulism to the Iraqi Ministry of Trade (a pathogen produces disease):

‘Materials Shipped: Bacillus anthracis (ATCC 240)
Batch# 05-14-63 (3 each)
Class III pathogen

Materials shipped: Clostridium botulinum Type A
Batch# 07-86 (3 each)
Class III pathogen.’ ”

 – Philip Taylor, The War in Iraq, Page 14

In October 1988, U.S. Special Envoy to the Afghan resistance Edmund McWilliams wrote a classified cable in reference to U.S. support for Pakistani and Saudi intelligence, titled, ” ‘ISI [Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence], [Afghan Islamist guerrilla leader] Gulbuddin [Hekmatyar] and Afghan Self-Determination.’ ‘THERE IS A GROWING FRUSTRATION, BORDERING ON HOSTILITY, AMONG AFGHANS ACROSS THE IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM AND FROM A BROAD RANGE OF BACKGROUNDS, TOWARD THE GOVERNMENT OF PAKISTAN AND TOWARD THE U.S. …THE EXTENT OF THIS SENTIMENT APPEARS UNPRECEDENTED AND INTENSIFYING. …MOST OF THESE OBSERVERS CLAIM THAT THIS EFFORT [BY HEKMATYAR AND ISI] HAS THE SUPPORT OF THE RADICAL PAKISTANI POLITICAL PARTY JAMAAT ISLAMI AND OF RADICAL ARABS. …WHILE THESE CHARGES MAY BE EXAGGERATED, THE PERCEPTION THEY GIVE RISE TO IS DEEP AND BROAD–AND OMINOUS…” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Page 183

“In a confession after his October 1988 arrest in Egypt, [Khalid Dahab, protege of al Qaeda member/FBI operative Ali Mohamed in California] admitted that he’d helped his namesake [Ali Mohamed] recruit up to ten al Qaeda sleeper operatives to be stationed in the United States to execute future acts of terror.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Peter Lance, Triple Cross, Page 30

“In the United States the Senate Foreign Relations Committee dispatched two staff members, Peter Galbraith and Christopher Van Hollen, to look at the situation in Kurdistan. When they reported back in October 1988 that Iraq was using chemical weapons as part of a policy to depopulate the region, the U.S. Congress responded by calling for sanctions.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Con Coughlin, Saddam: His Rise and Fall, Pages 242-243

The resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan helped the popularity of George H.W. Bush during his presidential campaign against Michael Dukakis in 1988. “On October 18, 1988, Bush stopped at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, at the site of Winston Churchill’s 1946 historic speech warning that an ‘Iron Curtain’ of communism was descending across the European continent. …’The Iron Curtain still stretches from Stettin to Trieste,’ Bush said. ‘But it’s a rusting curtain. Shafts of light from the Western side, our side, the free and prosperous side, are piercing the gloom of failure and despair on the other side.’…Seventy years after the Russian Revolution, Bush said, Marxism is finally ‘losing its luster.’ At last, in the age of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost (openness) and perestroika (transformation), the Cold War was thawing and there was a sense of a new flexibility. One key reason for such historic changes, Bush said, was that ‘the price of aggression was too high, because we supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan.’ ”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Pages 106-107

“On October 26, 1988, a [Muslim] Brother named Hashim ‘Abassi was rounded up in the so-called Autumn Leaves arrests in Neuss, Germany. ‘Abassi was part of a cell of Islamic militants that included his brother-in-law and the group’s leader, Muhammad Hafiz Dalkimoni, who were planning to blow up five civilian jetliners. Although ‘Abassi and most of the other Autumn Leaves conspirators were behind bars when Pan Am 103 exploded [on December 21, 1988], the investigators’ initial hypothesis was that they still had something to do with it. The lead was dropped when the investigators settled on two Libyans as the sole culprits. Today we know this was a mistake. If someone had bothered to look into ‘Abassi and his Syrian Muslim Brotherhood cell, we might have been led to the Hamburg cell [that eventually fostered the development of Mohammed Atta and the other Hamburg-based 9/11 hijackers].”

 – Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil, Page 123

 –

“In December 1988…Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million worth of pesticides to Iraq, despite concerns expressed by some in the U.S. government that they could be used as chemical warfare agents. According to The Washington Post [on July 19, 1992], ‘An Export-Import Bank official reported in a memorandum that he could find *no reason* to stop the sale, despite evidence that the pesticides were *highly toxic* to humans and would cause death *from asphyxiation.* ‘ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Amy Goodman with David Goodman, The Exception to the Rulers, Page 31

“On December 21, 1988, 270 people were killed when a bomb destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. …Two weeks before, on December 5, an alert from Mossad, Israel’s famed intelligence service, had been passed to the CIA. It warned that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to the U.S. would be bombed within two weeks. Flight 103 was a Frankfurt to U.S.-bound plane. The CIA had never passed the warning to the FBI.”

 – Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Page 24

“One of the most devastating acts of Islamic terror perpetrated against the west had been the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 on the night of December 21, 1988. When a Toshiba boom box packed with ten to fourteen ounces of Semtex (a Czech version of C-4 plastic explosives) detonated over Lockerbie, Scotland, it ripped open the Boeing 747, killing 259 passengers and crew on board. Another eleven people died on the ground.”

 – Peter Lance, Cover Up, Page 35

“After the bombing of [Pan Am] Flight 103 in [December 21] 1988, the Department of State was criticized for not making public in advance confidential intelligence that indicated there might be an attack on U.S. civil aviation. The result was the ‘no double standard policy,’ which requires the release of sanitized versions of threat intelligence when assured countermeasures are not feasible.” [Editor’s note: the author incorrectly identified the date of the Pan Am bombing as 1986.]

 – Yonah Alexander, ed., Combating Terrorism, Page 55

“The U.S. embassy in Kabul had been shut for security reasons since January 1989, so there was no CIA station in Afghanistan from which to collect intelligence about the Taliban or the sources of their newfound strength.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Page 5

“George H.W. Bush was inaugurated as the forty-first president of the United States on January 20, 1989.”

 – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Page 31

 –

“The withdrawal of the last Soviet soldier [from Afghanistan] took place in February [15] 1989, the first full month of the administration of George H. W. Bush.”

 – Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, Page 53

“General Boris V. Gromov, the commander of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, walked across the Friendship Bridge into Uzbekistan on February 15, 1989. ‘…Our nine-year stay ends with this.’ The Soviets had lost fifteen thousand lives and suffered more than thirty thousand casualties. Between a million and two million Afghans perished, perhaps 90 percent of them civilians.”

 – Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Page 157

In Fuad Hussein’s book, Al-Zarqawi: The Second al Qaeda Generation, former Egyptian army officer and al Qaeda military commander Sayf al Adel said: ” ‘After God granted the Muslim mujahideen in Afghanistan victory against the Russians [in February 1989] and when disagreements began to emerge among factions of the Afghan mujahideen, many of our Arab brothers were thinking of returning to their native countries, including the Saudis, Yemenis, and Jordanians, who had no problems with the security services in their homeland. On the other hand, we, the Egyptians, and our Syrian, Algerian, and Libyan brothers had no alternative other than to stay in Afghanistan, fight on the frontlines of jihad, or go to safe places where there were no powerful central governments.’ Therefore, we chose Sudan, Somalia, and some underprivileged African countries. Some fraternal brothers had already left to the countries that won independence from the disintegrating Soviet Union while others spread to the four corners of the world.’ ” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Pages 120-121

In an interview on June 13, 2005, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi said, ” ‘after [the Russians left Afghanistan in February] ’89, floodgates open to Afghanistan of all kind of Arab adventurists and that’s when radicalism starts creeping in. [jihadist/bin Laden mentor] Abdullah Azzam was selective. Osama was more in the mind-set that this is a jihad and we must open it to everybody. And Abdullah Azzam did not like that.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Page 85

In an interview in August 2005, “Ahmad Shah Ahmadazi [who] was acting Afghan prime minister from 1995 to 1996 [said:] ‘After the defeat of the Soviet Union [in February 1989], we sent a message to all Arabs that were in Afghanistan: *We thank them for their cooperation with us in fighting the Soviet Union. Now that the Soviet Union is defeated, please do not participate in any factions in Afghanistan to fight against us. And please go back to your home countries.* This was announced by all of us to the Arabs. Because all the Arabs were fighting along side [sic] [Afghan Islamist] Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Page 105

“An estimated fourteen thousand jihadis had dispersed after the Russians abandoned Afghanistan in [February 15] 1989, and untold numbers began to settle in New York and New Jersey.”

 – Peter Lance, 1000 Years For Revenge, Page 38

“…after the Soviet withdrawal [from Afghanistan] in [February 15] 1989, the international community turned away from Afghanistan and the militias continued to organize and fund themselves through drug production. The continuous violence and lack of government authority led to growing poverty and suffering across Afghanistan. It was in these circumstances that the Taliban came to power.”

 – Clare Short, An Honourable Deception?, Page 111

“By February 1989, the Soviets had retreated and [Osama] bin Laden had joined the civil war to turn once-tolerant Afghanistan into a model Islamic state. He financed the construction of vast training camps and bankrolled militant factions. His activities seemed to increase as the Soviets shrank back.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Richard Miniter, Losing Bin Laden, Page 12

“On February 15, 1989, the last Russian soldier departed Afghanistan. Osama and his fighting men claimed a great victory. Tragically, with the departure of the Russians, the Afghan warlords commenced quarreling, each faction determined to gain leadership of the war-weary country. Osama made some efforts to bring the warlords together, but his efforts were unsuccessful.”

 – Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing Up Bin Laden, Page 78

“With the Soviet withdrawal in February 1989, Afghanistan replaced the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon as the world’s premier terrorist training centre for about forty guerrilla and terrorist groups.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Rohan Gunaratna, Inside al Qaeda, Page 221

On February 24, 1989, shortly after the Soviets left Afghanistan, bin Laden’s mentor Abdallah “Azzam delivered a sermon in Islamabad laying out his vision of a jihadist future: ‘We will fight, defeat our enemies and establish an Islamic state on some sliver of land, such as Afghanistan. Afghanistan will expand, jihad will spread, Islam will fight in other places, Islam will fight the Jew in Palestine and establish Islamic states in Palestine and other places. Later these states will unite to form one Islamic state.’ “

 – Bruce Riedel, Deadly Embrace, Page 34

“In March 1989, State Department officials told Secretary of State James Baker that Iraq was working on chemical and biological weapons and that terrorists were still operating out of Iraq.”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 81

“In June [1989], the Defense Intelligence Agency sent a top secret report to thirty-eight Bush administration officials, warning it had uncovered a secret military procurement network for Iraq operating all over the world.”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 81

“In June 1989, at the same time that the jihad was ending in Afghanistan, Islamists staged a coup d’etat against the civilian, democratic government of Sudan. The leader of the coup was Brigadier General Omar Hasan al-Bashir, but the prime mover was Hasan al-Turabi, one of Africa’s most complex, original, charismatic, and devious characters. Like bin Laden and [militant Islamist Ayman] al-Zawahiri, Turabi attributed the failures of the Arab world to the fact that its governments were insufficiently Islamic and too dependent on the West. But unlike those other men, Turabi was a Quranic scholar who was well-acquainted with Europe and the United States.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Page 186

In Sudan, “Following the bloodless June 30, 1989, coup that brought the National Islamic Front to power, it increasingly became a center of Islamic extremism. Sudan announced a new terrorist-friendly visa policy: Arabs did not need visas to live in Sudan. The motive was to bring in Arab money. The result was to make Sudan a dumping ground for former Arab Afghans looking for a new, perfect ‘Islamic state.’ ”

 – Richard Miniter, Losing Bin Laden, Page 111

In July 1989, al Qaeda double agent “Ali Mohamed travels from Fort Bragg [North Carolina] to train the al Qaeda cell that will later execute the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Day of Terror plot to blow up the U.N., the FBI’s New York Office, and the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan. Over four weekends, an FBI surveillance team follows Ali’s trainees Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh, El Sayyid Nosair, Nidal Ayad, and Clement Rodney Hampton-El from the Al Farooq Mosque [in Brooklyn, New York] to a shooting range in Calverton, Long Island. They are photographed by the FBI firing thousands of rounds from automatic weapons.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Peter Lance, Triple Cross, (Timeline) Page 3

In his farewell/resignation letter on July 23, 1989, to U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley, U.S. Special Envoy to the Afghan resistance Ed McWilliams wrote: ” ‘I believed and continue to believe that we were wrong to have been so close to some in the [Northern] alliance; wrong to have given ISI [Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence] such power and (now) wrong not to be actively seeking a political settlement [in post-Soviet Afghanistan].’ ”

 – Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Page 199

“From July 2 to July 23, 1989, FBI agents [of the Special Operations Group (SOG)] banged off dozens of color shots of [al Qaeda member/FBI operative Ali Mohamed’s trainees in New York, including El Sayyid] Nosair, [Mahmud] Abouhalima, [Mohammed] Salameh, [Nidal] Ayyad and [Clement Rodney] Hampton-El, suspects later dubbed ‘ME’s’ for ‘Middle Eastern men’ in FBI files…The SOG clearly knew that these men were terrorists in training. Tommy Corrigan, a former senior member of the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, says that the surveillance stemmed from a tip that PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] terrorists were threatening to blow up casinos in Atlantic City [New Jersey]–a lead that seems almost comical now, in light of the crimes that these men would later commit…The chance to interdict their activities soon evaporated when the surveillance was ended. By the end of that summer, the ‘ME’s’ and their Green Beret-linked leader [Ali Mohamed] simply faded back into the shadows, and the FBI’s NYO [New York Office] reportedly closed its file on Ali Mohamed’s trainees.”

 – Peter Lance, Triple Cross, Pages 50-51

“On September 3, 1989, a Top Secret CIA assessment informed [Secretary of State James] Baker that Iraq had a program to develop nuclear weapons.”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 81

“In September 1989, the Defense Department discovered that an Iraqi front company in Cleveland [Ohio] was funneling American technology to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, but the [George H.W.] Bush administration allowed the company to operate–even after the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, nearly a year later.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 81

In spite of all the warnings about Iraq’s increasing procurement of war technology, including nuclear technology, “On October 2, 1989, President [George H.W.] Bush inexplicably signed a National Security Directive authorizing even closer relations with Iraq, giving Saddam yet more aid.”

 – Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, Page 81

President George H.W. Bush said, in National Security Directive 26 on October 2, 1989, ” ‘We should pursue, and seek to facilitate, opportunities for U.S. firms to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi economy, particularly in the energy area.’ ”

 – Antonia Juhasz, The Bush Agenda, Page 156

“President [George H.W.] Bush had signed a Persian Gulf policy directive, NSD [National Security Directive]-26, on October 2, 1989. It declared that normal relations between the countries [U.S. and Iraq] would serve long-term U.S. interests. The United States would propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior. The directive also mentioned that illegal use (not possession) of chemical or biological weapons would lead to economic and political sanctions. Sanctions would also result if Iraq breached International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. NSD-26 went on to say the United States should look for opportunities to participate in Iraqi reconstruction, especially in the energy sector. Finally, the U.S. government should consider sales of nonlethal military assistance.”

 – Charles Duelfer, Hide and Seek, Page 60

On October 2, 1989, “President [George H.W.] Bush issued National Security Directive 26, which ordered the different branches of the federal government to expand America’s political and economic ties to Baghdad.”

 – Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War Over Iraq, Page 41

On October 2, 1989, President George H.W. Bush signed National Security Directive 26, titled ‘U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf.’ It read, ” ‘Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security. The United States remains committed to defend its vital interests in the region, if necessary and appropriate through the use of U.S. military force, against the Soviet Union or any other regional power with interests inimical to our own. The United States also remains committed to support the individual and collective self-defense of friendly countries in the area to enable them to play a more active role in their own defense and thereby reduce the necessity for unilateral U.S. military intervention. The United States also will encourage the effective support and participation of our western allies and Japan to promote our mutual interests in the Persian Gulf region.’ ”

 – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Page 46

On October 2, 1989, President George H.W. Bush signed National Security Directive 26, titled ‘U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf.’ It read, ” ‘Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our long-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East. The United States government should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase our influence with Iraq. At the same time, the Iraqi leadership must understand that any illegal use of chemical and/or biological weapons will lead to economic and political sanctions, for which we would seek the broadest possible support from our allies and friends. Any breach by Iraq of IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s watchdog in this area] safeguards in its nuclear program will result in a similar response.’ ”

 – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Page 47

On October 2, 1989, President George H.W. Bush signed National Security Directive 26, titled ‘U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf.’ It read, ” ‘We should pursue, and seek to facilitate, opportunities for U.S. firms to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi economy, particularly in the energy area, where they do not conflict with our non-proliferation and other significant objectives. Also, as a means of developing access to and influence with the Iraqi defense establishment, the United States should consider sales of non-lethal forms of military assistance, e.g., training courses and medical exchanges, on a case-by-case basis.’ ”

 – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Page 47

President George H.W. Bush in White House National Security Directive 26: "Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security. … Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East."

 – George Bush Presidential Library and Museum – 41, “White House National Security Directive 26 – Subject: U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf,” Oct. 2, 1989, Accessed online 3/10/2016,