“The CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) had established a special bin Laden unit in January 1996. By 1998, more than one hundred case officers and intelligence analysts were serving on the bin Laden station.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Richard Miniter, Losing Bin Laden, Page 165 […]
1/15/1996
“As the threats from bin Laden began to grow, the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center in January 1996 established a separate unit with the sole mission of collecting intelligence on the Al Qaeda leader [Osama bin Laden] and disrupting his network. In an unprecedented action, the unit became a separate CIA ‘station’ [known as ‘Alec Station’]–the only […]
1/15/1996
“At the same time [January 1996], the two bin Laden ‘offices of origin’ in New York, the SDNY [Southern District of New York] and the FBI’s NYO [New York Office], dedicated an existing unit, Squad I-49, to building a case against the Saudi billionaire.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] […]
1/15/1996
“Before January [1996] was over, the CIA had created ‘Alec Station,’ the first ‘virtual’ office that focused on a specific individual (as opposed to a country). Formally known as ‘the bin Laden issue station,’ it was initially staffed by sixteen analysts and located in an office park a few miles from the headquarters at Langley […]
1/15/1996
“In January 1996, the Intelligence Community obtained information concerning a planned suicide attack by persons associated with [militant Islamist] Shaykh [Omar Abdel] al-Rahman and a key al Qaeda operative to fly to the United States from Afghanistan and attack the White House.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Peter […]
1/9/1996
“While still British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher had famously warned President George H.W. Bush not to ‘go wobbly’ after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. But the formidable Thatcher had been voted out of office before the war was concluded. She seemed unhappy with the result in Iraq. ‘There is the aggressor, Saddam Hussein, still in power,’ […]
1/9/1996
“General Wafiq al Sammarai, who headed Iraqi military intelligence during the Gulf War, said in an interview [with Frontline on PBS on January 9, 1996] that some of the Iraqi’s Scud missiles had been loaded with chemical warheads, but they were not used, ‘because the warning was quite severe and quite effective. The allied troops […]
1/9/1996
According to an interview with Dick Cheney for Frontline: The Gulf War, which first aired on January 9, 1996: ” ‘I was not an enthusiast about getting U.S. forces and going into Iraq,’ Cheney later said. ‘We were there in the southern part of Iraq to the extent we needed to be there to defeat […]
1/1/1996
Former Iraqi Army Captain Sabah Khodada worked at the Salman Pak military facility outside of Baghdad. He spoke with PBS’s Frontline and The New York Times on October 14, 2001. In describing the training at the camp, he said: ” ‘…the purpose of establishing Saddam’s fighters is to attack American targets and American interests. This […]
12/15/1995
“Representatives of Osama bin Laden contacted Iranian intelligence agents in the mid-1990’s [December 1995] in an attempt to forge an anti-American alliance of terror between Iran and Mr. bin Laden’s network, Al Qaeda, according to United States intelligence reports.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – James Risen, “Bin Laden […]