1/15/2001

Chevron board member Condoleezza “Rice resigned…on January 15, 2001, less than a week before she became national security adviser.”  – Elisabeth Bumiller, Condoleezza Rice: An American Life, Page 109 […]

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1/15/2001

From an article on prominent Saudis who had financed al Qaeda: “Last January [2001], the United Nations Security Council identified five of them and ordered members to impound their assets. They are: Sad al-Sharif, Mr. bin Laden’s brother-in-law; Bilal bin Marwan, a senior lieutenant of Al Qaeda; Amin al-Haq, an Afghan-born doctor thought to be […]

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1/15/2001

“A Department of Defense report released in January [2001] said that Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan and Libya all have active chemical or biological weapons programs. In addition, Iraq and Iran are trying to acquire materials for nuclear devices, the report said. Those nations all are on the State Department’s list of governments thought to sponsor […]

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1/15/2001

Outgoing National Security Advisor “Sandy Berger, who felt the first President Bush had failed to arrange adequate transition briefings on national security for the incoming Clinton team, vowed to run a handoff of the sort he would have wished to receive. The ‘number one’ issue on his agenda, he recalled [in his September 19, 2002 […]

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1/15/2001

“In January [2001], the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] issued an advisory to airlines and airport personnel warning that terrorists might try to hijack or destroy American aircraft. It was the first of fifteen such warnings issued in the nine months leading up to September 11.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes […]

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1/15/2001

“Before September 11 [2001], General [Michael] Hayden had been especially eager to counter charges that the NSA [National Security Agency] illegally spied on E-mail and other communications of Americans. ‘I’m here to tell you that we don’t get close to the Fourth Amendment,’ he said, referring to the constitutional provision prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure…in […]

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1/15/2001

According to a January 20, 2002, article in The Washington Post, in January 2001, outgoing Deputy National Security Advisor General Don Kerrick warned the incoming Bush Administration about the threat posed by al Qaeda. “As a courtesy, he sent a memo to the NSC [National Security Council] front office on ‘things you need to pay […]

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1/15/2001

“It is still not clear exactly what bin Laden’s role in the [October 12, 2000 USS] Cole explosion was, but the glee he took in the attack is undeniable. In Afghanistan in January 2001, at the wedding celebration for one of his sons, bin Laden declaimed an extraordinary poem about the Cole to hundreds of […]

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1/15/2001

In January 2001, “in Phoenix, Arizona, [future 9/11 hijacker] Hani Hanjour enrolled at JetTech Flight School. Instructors there worried about his poor language skills. …Hanjour held a commercial license, but his English was so bad the staff wondered how he got it and whether it was legitimate. They called local FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] inspectors, […]

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1/15/2001

When future 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah returned to Florida in January 2001, he pursued further flight training. “He practiced extensively on a simulator in Miami. He had not finished the required work the year before to get his commercial license, as [fellow hijackers Mohamed] Atta and [Marwan] el-Shehhi had done. [At the same time,] Atta […]

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