” ‘We were convinced money from Iraq was going to bin Laden, who was then sending it places Iraq wanted it to go,’ former CIA senior counterterrorism analyst Dr. Stanley Bedlington told USA Today on December 3, 2001. ‘There certainly is no doubt that Saddam Hussein had pretty strong ties to bin Laden while he […]
12/3/2001
“On December 3 [2001], a CIA Jawbreaker intelligence team operating near the town of Gardez, in eastern Afghanistan, picked up the first ‘hard’ intelligence that bin Laden was in fact at Tora Bora [Afghanistan]. A U.S. Army Grey Fox SIGINT [signals intelligence] team near Gardez intercepted some al Qaeda walkie-talkie radio traffic that confirmed he […]
12/3/2001
From a December 3, 2001, article in USA Today about an Iraq/al Qaeda connection: ” ‘We were convinced that money from Iraq was going to bin Laden, who was then sending it to places they wanted it to go,’ said Stanley Bedlington, a senior CIA analyst who monitored bin Laden in Sudan. In 1994, according […]
12/2/2001
“In his post 9/11 book, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner–Meditations on the Jihadist Movement [published on December 2, 2001], [Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman] al Zawahiri justifies an escalation of terrorist techniques and tactics: ‘(1) The need to inflict the maximum casualties against the opponent, for this is the language understood by the West, no matter […]
12/2/2001
“On December 2 [2001], a twelve-man Green Beret A-team, designated ODA 572, arrived in Jalalabad [Afghanistan] to support [Northern Alliance militia commander Hazrat] Ali’s attack [on bin Laden and other al Qaeda forces] on Tora Bora. The unit was ordered not to engage in combat operations. Rather, its principal mission was to call in air […]
12/2/2001
On December 2, 2001, al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote, in Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner: “…the Islamic jihad movement must escalate its strikes and means of resisting its enemies, to keep up with the extraordinary increase in their number, the quality of their weapons, their destructive capacity, and their disregard for all taboos, even […]
12/2/2001
On December 2, 2001, al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote, in Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner: “Today we are witnessing a new phenomenon that continues to gain ground: young Muslim fighters who have abandoned family and country, neglected wealth, left their studies and jobs to join the battlefields of jihad. …What led us to the […]
12/1/2001
“On December 1 [2001], U.S. planes had attacked several villages near Tora Bora [Afghanistan], killing fifty-five civilians after warlords had given the wrong village names to U.S. intelligence.” – Ahmed Rashid, Descent Into Chaos, Page 106 […]
12/1/2001
In The New York Times on December 1, 2001, Deputy Secretary of State Richard “Armitage was quoted as saying, ‘I don’t think there is any question that an Iraq with weapons of mass destruction is a threat to its neighbors and ultimately to ourselves, and so we will do what we need to do to […]
12/1/2001
On December 1, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent an order to Central Command leader, General Tommy Franks. “Rumsfeld wanted to know how Franks would conduct military operations to remove Saddam from power, eliminate the threat of any possible weapons of mass destruction, and choke off his suspected support of terrorism.” – Bob Woodward, […]