“On 9/11 [2001], despite claims by former FBI directors and officials that fighting terrorism was a major priority, the FBI had only 6 percent of its workforce assigned to counterterrorism.” – Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Page xiii […]
9/11/2001
“On September 11, 2001, the FBI’s annual technology budget under the Clinton administration was actually $36 million less than the last [George H.W.] Bush budget eight years earlier. The FBI’s information infrastructure had been starved, and by September 11 it was collapsing from budgetary neglect. On September 11, 2001, and for a considerable time afterward, […]
9/11/2001
On September 11, 2001, “The 19 hijackers were Marwan Al Shehhi, Fayez Ahmed, Mohald Al Shehri, Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Al Ghamdi on United Airlines Flight 175 which destroyed the World Trade Centre; Waleed M Al Shehri, Wail Al Shehri, Mohamed Atta, Abdulaziz Alomari and Satam Al Suqami on American Airlines Flight 11, which also […]
9/11/2001
“Al Qaeda was the only terrorist organization capable of such spectacular, well-coordinated attacks, [CIA Director George] Tenet said [to the National Security Council on the afternoon of September 11, 2001]. Intelligence monitoring had overheard a number of known bin Laden operatives congratulating each other after the attacks.” – Bob Woodward, Bush at War, Page 27 […]
9/11/2001
“The Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine New York station was destroyed in the Sept. 11 [2001] attack on the World Trade Center, seriously disrupting United States intelligence operations while bringing the war on terrorism dangerously close to home for America’s spy agency, government officials say.” – James Risen, “Secret C.I.A. Site in New York was Destroyed […]
9/11/2001
“Within hours of the terror attacks on Sept. 11 [2001], law enforcement officials say, F.B.I. agents intercepted telephone calls in which suspected associates of Al Qaeda in the United States were overheard celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” – Neil A. Lewis and David Johnston, “Jubilant Calls on Sept. 11 […]
9/11/2001
“American and British warplanes attacked Iraqi air-defense forces in southern Iraq on Sept. 11 [2001], and six times [in the month] since then, in a continued escalation of skirmishes, which have dragged on for nearly three years.” – Serge Schmemann, “U.S. Ambassador Warns Iraq Against Stirring up Trouble,” The New York Times, Oct. 10, 2001 […]
9/11/2001
On the morning of September 11, 2001, “Ten out of the 19 hijackers (including 9 out of 10 on the two American Airlines flights) were identified by the CAPPS [Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System] system.” This was an FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)-approved, automated system which was “created to identify passengers who should be subject to […]
9/11/2001
“Nine of the 19 hijackers would have their bags subjected to close scrutiny that morning [September 11, 2001]–six of them because a computerized screening system singled them out for enhanced security checks, and three others because of irregularities in the identification documents that two of them held. Their knives, if discovered, had blades less than […]
9/11/2001
“On the afternoon of 9/11, according to contemporaneous notes, Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld instructed [Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] General [Richard] Myers to obtain quickly as much information as possible [regarding the perpetrators of the attacks]. The notes indicate that he also told Myers that he was not simply interested in […]