“In a passage setting out bin Laden’s own justification for the destruction of the World Trade Center, the intelligence dossier [released by U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 14, 2001] quoted him as saying, ‘It was in revenge for our people killed in Palestine and Iraq. So if avenging the killing of our people […]
11/14/2001
Then-CIA Director George Tenet noted: “When Kabul [Afghanistan] fell, on November 14 [2001], we figured that Bin Ladin and his cohorts would be even more likely to try to flee Afghanistan, perhaps for the ungoverned regions of Pakistan. CIA rushed to set up counterterrorist pursuit teams, made up of Northern Alliance fighters with U.S. advisors, […]
11/14/2001
“On November 14, 2001, he [Saudi crown prince Abdullah] convened the grand ulema [religious scholars] to tell them that they needed to get a grip on the inflammatory preaching in the mosques that justified the September 11 attackers and, by implication, questioned the Saudi right to rule.” – Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age […]
11/13/2001
“On November 13, 2001…President Bush issued a military order formally appointing the secretary of defense [Donald Rumsfeld] as the ‘detention authority’ for captured prisoners and for establishing the outlines of a justice system to try them. The order was the product of a series of discussions between White House and Justice Department lawyers. The President’s […]
11/13/2001
Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote: “On the evening of November 13, 2001, I learned that the President [Bush] had signed a military order earlier that day that I had not even been given. The order directed the Defense Department to establish military commissions to try detainees and issue guidance on procedures that would govern […]
11/13/2001
“By November 13, 2001, President Bush had made the erroneous claim that the September 11 attacks were acts of international terrorism of such an intensity as to create ‘a state of armed conflict’ and that they amounted to acts of ‘war’ by bin Laden and his followers. The Bush administration also argued that it had […]
11/13/2001
“On November 13, 2001, President Bush issued an order authorizing the detention of terrorists and their trial by military commission.” – Julian E. Zelizer, ed., The Presidency of George W. Bush, Page 45 […]
11/13/2001
Former President George W. Bush wrote: “On November 13, 2001, I signed an executive order establishing military tribunals to try captured terrorists. The system was based closely on the one created by FDR in 1942, which tried and convicted eight Nazi spies who had infiltrated the United States. The Supreme Court had unanimously upheld the […]
11/13/2001
“The day that Kabul [Afghanistan] fell [November 13, 2001], a radio intercept caught the Taliban’s leader, Mullah [Mohammad] Omar, broadcasting a message from Kandahar exhorting what was left of his troops to stand and fight, telling them, ‘I order you to obey your commanders completely and not to go hither and thither. Any person who […]
11/13/2001
On November 13, 2001, Osama bin Laden “and his forces left the city of Jalalabad [Afghanistan] in a convoy of Toyota pickup trucks just ahead of advancing American and Northern Alliance forces and moved into prepared defensive positions in the Tora Bora mountains, thirty miles southwest of Jalalabad.” – Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry, […]