“America continued its war against [terrorist group and al Qaeda ally] Harkat [ul-Mujahedin] after 9/11, when on October 23, 2001, U.S. warplanes bombed a Harkat office in Kabul [Afghanistan], killing twenty-two Pakistani members of Harkat.” – Ahmed Rashid, Descent Into Chaos, Page 113 […]
10/23/2001
In a memo to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales on October 23, 2001, Deputy Chief in the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo “reiterated his view that the president’s powers trump the Constitution. ‘Our office recently concluded,’ he wrote, ‘that the Fourth Amendment [prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures] had no application to domestic military operations.’ […]
10/23/2001
“The USA Patriot Act is an acronym derived from the title: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The bill was introduced on October 23, 2001, and three days later, with only Senator Russ Feingold (Democrat of Wisconsin) voting nay, it was sent to the president [Bush] for […]
10/23/2001
“Egyptian experts on terrorism said [al Qaeda second-in-command] Dr. [Ayman al-] Zawahiri had been far more important than the rank would suggest. ‘He brought the organizational skills to bin Laden’s operation,’ said Muhammad Saleh, a reporter with the newspaper Al Hayat who has followed terrorist groups for many years. ‘He knows how to set up […]
10/22/2001
Columnist William Safire wrote, in the October 22, 2001, issue of The New York Times: ” ‘It is absurd to claim…that Iraq is not an active collaborator with, harborer of, and source of sophisticated training and unconventional weaponry for bin Laden’s world terror network.’ ” – Craig Unger, The Fall of the House of Bush, […]
10/22/2001
“Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., for example, Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Monday [October 22, 2001] that Saudi Arabia ‘is funding hatred.’ He also said the United States had ‘gone overboard’ in its ‘love affair’ with Saudi Arabia. ‘I know they’ve got a lot of oil, but they […]
10/22/2001
Representative Porter Goss (R-FL) said: ” ‘the Clinton administration was not very interested in our intelligence community, did not spend very much time worrying about, or using it, or investing in it.’ ” – Alison Mitchell and Todd S. Purdum, “Lawmakers Seek Inquiry Into Intelligence Failures,” The New York Times, Oct. 22, 2001 […]
10/21/2001
On October 21, 2001, Osama bin Laden was interviewed by Taysir Allouni of Al Jazeera. “The interview began with bin Laden acknowledging al Qaeda’s culpability [for 9/11] but insisting that the attacks were a form of self-defense, designed to defend the Palestinian people and religious sites in Saudi Arabia. He continued, ‘And if inciting for […]
10/21/2001
” ‘To a certain extent,’ said Philip K. Verleger, an independent economist and a senior adviser in the Carter administration, ‘we let U.S. foreign policy be dictated to us by the house of Saud.’ It is unclear what the United States can do to loosen its ties to the Saudi regime, so long as it […]
10/21/2001
“Over the decades, the Saudis’ pursuit of American money and military protection melded perfectly with America’s ever-growing oil appetite to turn the two nations into reflexive allies. Saudi Arabia and the United States worked together for years to shape the balance of power in the Middle East and Central Asia.” – Neela Banerjee, “The High, […]