On February 6, 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress: ” ‘The President [Bush] is examining a full range of options of how to deal with Iraq,’… Regime change was ‘something the United States might have to do alone. How to do it? I would not like to go into any of the details […]
2/6/2002
In an appearance before Congress on February 6, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet “rejected any suggestion that the CIA failed to do its job [anticipating the 9/11 attacks]. ‘Failure means no focus, no attention, no discipline, and those were not present in what either we or the FBI did, here and around the world,’ Tenet […]
2/6/2002
In hearing before Congress on February 6, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet “testily rejected suggestions Wednesday that U.S. intelligence services had failed to anticipate the [9/11] terrorist attacks. …Tenet acknowledged, however, that the CIA had not known of the Sept. 11 plot, which he said was held ‘in the heads of three or four people.’ […]
2/5/2002
“On February 5, 2002…for reasons that remain unclear, the CIA issued a new report on the alleged Niger deal [to sell uranium to Iraq], one that provided significantly more detail, including what was said to be ‘verbatim text’ of the accord between Niger and Iraq. In the State Department, analysts were still suspicious of the […]
2/2/2002
The decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban forces the legal protection of the Geneva Conventions “had the full support not only of the Justice Department but also the Department of Defense and the State Department. ‘The lawyers all agree that al Qaeda or Taliban soldiers are presumptively not POWs [prisoners of war],’ wrote Will […]
2/1/2002
“The memo, [dated Feb. 1, 2002] written by Attorney General John Ashcroft, summarizes the position of the Justice Department on why the Geneva Convention does not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners. Ashcroft warns against the possibility of U.S. officials being subject to prosecution for violating U.S. and international laws if the Geneva Conventions […]
2/1/2002
“…a thirty-seven-page booklet was released by the White House in [February 1] 2002 to accompany the FY [fiscal year] 2003 budget request. Entitled Securing the Homeland, Strengthening the Nation, it not only effectively presented George W. Bush as a wartime president but also provided the rhetorical architecture for the War on Terror as the issue […]
2/1/2002
“It was via email that [British-born Pakistani terrorist] Omar Sheikh lured his final victim, [journalist] Daniel Pearl, to his death. The reporter had been promised an interview with Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani, of the Islamic Jamaat ul-Fuqra, an Islamist group, believing that Gilani had ties to the ‘shoe bomber,’ Richard Reid. With no prospect of […]
2/1/2002
From a list of attacks ‘believed to have been conducted by, or inspired by, al-Qaeda’: “February 1, 2002: Karachi, Pakistan: American journalist Daniel Pearl is kidnapped and beheaded.” – Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, Growing Up Bin Laden, Page 320 […]
2/1/2002
Former President George W. Bush recalled, in late January 2002, “terrorists in Pakistan abducted Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. They alleged he was a CIA spy and tried to blackmail the United States into bargaining for his release. America has a longstanding policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and I continued it. I knew […]