“In his memoir Jawbreaker, published in 2005, [top CIA Commander Gary] Berntsen, a Bush loyalist, tells of how his teams found bin Laden and his remaining entourage in the [Tora Bora] mountains of the Afghan-Pakistani border [in December 2001] and begged Centcom [Central Command] for eight hundred U.S. Army Rangers to ‘block a possible Al-Qaeda […]
12/15/2001
Following the November 2001 investigation by the U.S. embassy in Niger into sales of uranium from Niger to Iraq, “State Department analysts…concluded that the Niger deal was a fraud. In December 2001, Greg Thielmann, director for strategic proliferation and military affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), reviewed Iraq’s WMD program […]
12/15/2001
“President Bush completed his first year in office with the highest public approval rating ever recorded for a president: more than 80 percent of the nation thought he was doing a good job [according to several news polls in December 2001].” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Karen DeYoung, […]
12/15/2001
Appearing on Frontline on January 11, 2006, “Michael Scheuer, chief of the CIA’s bin Laden desk from 1995 to 1999, said the failure [to capture bin Laden in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December 2001] was owing to ‘the abject fear of American casualties.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] […]
12/15/2001
“Following the overthrow of the Taliban in December 2001, Spain decided to deploy up to five hundred troops as part of the U.S.-led occupation force in Afghanistan.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Deepak Tripathi, Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan, Page 38 […]
12/15/2001
In December 2001, “The Taliban was on the run, and bin Laden and the hard core of al Qaeda were cornered in the White Mountains at Tora Bora [Afghanistan], against the Pakistani border. But the Pentagon did not deploy enough American troops to seal off the area, on either side of the border. Army Gen. […]
12/15/2001
The capture of potential 20th hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani in December 2001 was “the immediate cause for ratcheting up the military’s [enhanced interrogation] techniques. …top Pentagon officials were increasingly desperate for actionable intelligence on pending Al Qaeda attacks. …U.S. officials believed the suspect was hiding more, and that tougher measures were called for to make him […]
12/15/2001
“After a few weeks, in December 2001, they [David Wurmser and Mike Maloof of the Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group] produced a fat set of PowerPoint slides, each crammed with information on financial, operational, ideological, or other connections among terrorist groups and their state and nonstate supporters. This information had been developed through a careful […]
12/15/2001
Then-CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “In December 2001 a sharp WMD analyst at CIA found the initial lead on which we would pull and, ultimately, unravel the al-Qa’ida anthrax networks. But of all al-Qa’ida’s efforts to obtain other forms of WMD, the main threat is the nuclear one. I am convinced that this is where […]
12/15/2001
“On December 15 [2001], bin Laden got on his shortwave radio. He praised his ‘most loyal fighters’–about 800 strong, at that point, tucked throughout the complex of caves [in Tora Bora, Afghanistan]–and said ‘forgive me’ for drawing them into a defeat. He said the battle against the ‘crusaders’ would continue ‘on new fronts.’ Then, he […]