Reign of Terror

by Spencer Ackerman

  According to an informant: Julie DelCour, “Jurors Hear Howe’s Testimony: Ex-Informant Says She Had Seen McVeigh at Elohim City in 1994,” Tulsa World, December 11, 1997.

  an “inspiration” to younger soldiers: Dale Russakoff and Serge F. Kovaleski, “An Ordinary Boy’s Extraordinary Rage,” Washington Post, July 2, 1995.

  talking about avenging them: Andrew Gumbel and Roger G. Charles, Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed—and Why It Still Matters (New York: HarperLuxe, 2012), 123–24.

  from The Turner Diaries: Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 222.

  people McVeigh killed: Gumbel and Charles, Oklahoma City, 47, 78–79. Theresa Walker, “20 Years Later, OKC Bombing Victim Helped by Laguna Beach Has Found Peace,” Orange County Register, April 18, 2015.

  Cal Thomas agreed: Gumbel and Charles, Oklahoma City, 58. Robert Marquand, “Media Still Portray Muslims as Terrorists,” Christian Science Monitor, January 22, 1996. Farhan Haq, “Anti-Muslim Backlash Feared,” Inter Press Service, April 20, 1995. Walter Goodman, “Terror in Oklahoma City; TV Critic’s Notebook; Wary Network Anchors Battle Dubious Scoops,” New York Times, April 20, 1995. Mike Royko, “Time to Up the Ante Against Terrorism,” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1995.

  “I’ll never forget it”: Norman Kempster, “Man Returned to United States Is Not a Suspect,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1995. Marquand, “Media Still Portray.”

  Several Elohim City Residents: Belew, Bring the War Home, 226.

  The need for a successful prosecution: Gumbel and Charles, Oklahoma City, 257–77.

  ATF informant, Carol Howe: Ibid. David Pugliese, “Meet the Holiday Inn of Hate,” Ottawa Citizen, April 15, 2000. Belew, Bring the War Home, 234.

  Whether or not anyone at Elohim City: Belew, Bring the War Home, 210–16.

  a broad disavowal: Laura Smith, “Armed Resistance, Lone Wolves and Media Messaging: Meet the Godfather of the Alt-Right,” Timeline/Medium.com, November 6, 2017, timeline.com/louis-beam-white-supremacy-history-20d028315d, accessed September 12, 2019. Belew, Bring the War Home, 27–30.

  even after McVeigh’s conviction: Pugliese, “Meet the Holiday Inn of Hate.”

  A Washington Post profile: Ronald Brownstein, “Public Fears the Price of Security May Be Liberty,” Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1995. Russakoff and Kovaleski, “An Ordinary Boy’s Extraordinary Rage.” Arthur Hirsch, “The Loner; Seeking Solitude; With So Many Individualists Out There Doing Terrible Things These Days, Is It Possible that an American Love Affair with the Strong Silent Type Is on the Rocks?” Baltimore Sun, April 24, 1996.

  “McVeigh’s enemies weren’t blacks”: Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Harper, 2001), 86–89.

  Not long before the bombing: Fox Butterfield, “Rifle Association Has Long Practice in Railing against Federal Agents,” New York Times, May 8, 1995. Guy Gugliotta, “NRA, Backers Have Focused Ire on ATF,” Washington Post, April 26, 1995.

  At trial McVeigh’s lawyers: Julie DelCour, “The Real McVeigh? Defense Describes Him as Pleasant, Polite,” Tulsa World, September 12, 1996. Stephen Paulson, “Attorneys Portray McVeigh as Gulf War Hero,” Associated Press, September 11, 1996. Sam Howe Verhovek, “The Emotional Politics of a Political Trial,” New York Times, April 27, 1997.

  Limbaugh called the president: Todd S. Purdham, “Shifting Debate to the Political Climate, Clinton Condemns ‘Promoters of Paranoia,’ ” New York Times, April 25, 1995. Testimony of Gregory Nojeim, American Civil Liberties Union, to the House Judiciary Committee, June 12, 1995, available at https://fas.org/irp/congress/1995_hr/h950612-3n.htm.

  Congressional hearings on Waco and Ruby Ridge: George Lardner Jr. and Pierre Thomas, “U.S. to Pay Family in FBI Idaho Raid,” Washington Post, August 16, 1995.

  A Los Angeles Times poll: Testimony of Gregory Nojeim, American Civil Liberties Union, House Judiciary Committee, June 12, 1995. Brownstein, “Public Fears the Price of Security May Be Liberty.” “Blown Away? The Bill of Rights after Oklahoma City,” Harvard Law Review 109, no. 8 (June 1996), 2074–91.

  “eviscerated the heart and soul”: Statement of President Bill Clinton on signing the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, April 24, 1996. Greg McDonald, “Terrorism Bill Loses Hard Edge,” Houston Chronicle, March 14, 1996. Charles V. Zehren, “Unkept Promises: Still No Pact on Anti-Terror Bill,” Newsday, April 15, 1996. Text of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-104publ132/html/PLAW-104publ132.htm, accessed September 19, 2019.

  making the American carceral state more lethal: Elizabeth Bruenig, “The Fire Last Time,” New York Times, January 18, 2021.

  For good measure, a bill: Jordan E. Helton, “Construction of a Terrorist under the Material Support Statute, 18 USC 2339B,” American University Law Review 67, no. 2, article 5. Jim Abrams, “A Year after Oklahoma City, Anti-Terrorism Bill Nears Completion,” Associated Press, April 15, 1996. Liliana Segura, “Gutting Habeas Corpus: The Inside Story of How Bill Clinton Sacrificed Prisoners’ Rights for Political Gain,” The Intercept, May 4, 2016.

  Chapter One: 9/11 and the Security State

  By August 6: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 254–77.

  Yet the president responded: Michael Morell, The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight against Terrorism—From al Qa’ida to ISIS (New York: TwelveBooks, 2015), 41.

  “The Arabian Peninsula has never”: “Al-Qaeda’s Declaration of War against Americans,” The al-Qaeda Reader, ed. Raymond Ibrahim (New York: Crown, 2007), 11–14.

  He marveled at all: Susan Sachs, “Below 14th Street, Silence but an Eerie Disquiet,” New York Times, September 13, 2001. Mark Abadi, “Trump Had an Unusual Reaction to 9/11 Just Hours after the Attacks,” Business Insider, September 11, 2019. Additionally, Trump speculated baselessly that al-Qaeda had planted bombs in the World Trade Center because “how could a plane . . . possibly go through the steel?”

  “They certainly found our American”: Zell Miller, September 12, 2001. Collected in Zell Miller: A Senator Speaks Out on Patriotism, Values and Character (Washington, D.C.: Monument Press, 2005), 78.

  “Think of the guilt”: Edward Snowden, Permanent Record (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019), 80.

  with energy if not enthusiasm: Michael Morell, a senior career CIA official at the time of the attacks who rose to become acting director, titled his reflections on the War on Terror The Great War of Our Time.

  The fires at Ground Zero burned for one hundred days: Staff and agencies, “Ground Zero Stops Burning, after 100 Days,” Guardian, December 20, 2001. Paul J. Lioy et al., “Characterization of the Dust/Smoke Aerosol that Settled East of the World Trade Center (WTC) after the Collapse of the WTC 11 September 2001,” Environmental Health Perspectives 110, no. 7 (July 2002): 703–14. Robin Schulman, “Ex-EPA Chief Is Ruled Not Liable for 9/11 Safety Claims,” Washington Post, April 23, 2008.

  “He’s bursting out all over”: Peggy Noonan, “God Is Back,” Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2001, available here: https://peggynoonan.com/154.

  A thirty-three-year-old Palestinian-born: Tram Nguyen, We Are All Suspects Now (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), 51.

  Hate crimes against Muslims—or those, like Sikhs: Kuang Keng Kuek Ser, “Data: Hate Crimes Against Muslims Increased after 9/11,” Public Radio International, September 12, 2016.

  “Larry Silverstein, the owner of the WTC”: Terry J. Allen, “The 9/11 Truth Conspiracy Is a Distraction from the Real Crimes of Our Government,” In These Times, July 11, 2006.

  Before September ended O’Reilly: Dennis Prager to Bill O’Reilly, The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News, September 19, 2001. Bill O’Reilly, The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News, September 29, 2001. Bill O�
��Reilly, “Man Whose Father Died in Trade Center Signs Anti-War Ad,” The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News, February 4, 2003.

  “All the time I would say”: Author’s interviews with Adham Amin Hassoun, May 30 and June 11, 2020.

  college student, Monique Danison: Michael Elliott, “The Shoe Bomber’s World,” Time, February 16, 2002.

  New York’s reactionary mayor: Talk magazine, November 2001.

  He echoed Whitman: Anthony DePalma, “Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy,” New York Times, May 14, 2007. Wayne Barrett, “Rudy Giuliani’s Five Big Lies About 9/11,” Village Voice, July 31, 2007.

  Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: Peter Lattman, “Justice Scalia Hearts Jack Bauer,” Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2007.

  Bush urged people to go shopping: Todd S. Purdham, “Bush Warns of a Wrathful, Shadowy, Inventive War,” New York Times, September 17, 2001.

  “not going to give up my Botox”: Ruth La Ferla, “When Times Get Tough, Some Go for Plastic Surgery,” New York Times, October 21, 2001.

  But rather than dismantling it: Susan Sontag, “Tuesday, and After,” The New Yorker, September 17, 2001. Joan Didion, Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2003), 13. Lawrence F. Kaplan, “No Choice,” The New Republic, October 1, 2001. Even Sontag’s biographer, Benjamin Moser, wrote about Sontag’s 9/11 essay, “Behind her analysis was the lack of empathy that wrecked her relationships and trivialized many of her political observations.” Benjamin Moser, Sontag: Her Life and Work (New York: Ecco, 2019), 662.

  “In the wake of a massacre”: Charles Krauthammer, “Voices of Moral Obtuseness,” Washington Post, September 21, 2001. Krauthammer wrote before an accurate tally of the dead was available.

  The Strokes, on the cusp: Billboard staff, “Strokes Pull NYPD-Themed Song from Album,” Billboard, September 20, 2001.

  In the months after 9/11, Didion: Anne K. Kofol, “Yasin Delivers ‘Jihad’ Speech,” Harvard Crimson, June 6, 2002. Didion, Fixed Ideas, 13–15.

  “a known al-Qaeda facility”: Matt Wells, “Al-Jazeera Accuses U.S. of Bombing Its Kabul Office,” Guardian, November 17, 2001. Committee to Protect Journalists, “U.S. Airstrike Destroys Al-Jazeera Office in Kabul,” November 13, 2001. Committee to Protect Journalists, “Attacks on the Press 2001: Afghanistan,” March 26, 2002.

  “One good thing”: Roger Rosenblatt, “The Age of Irony Comes to an End,” Time, September 24, 2001.

  On the rainy Friday after 9/11: “Bush Leads Memorial Service for Victims of Terror Attack,” New York Times, September 14, 2001.

  “[T]his war was so different”: Quoted in Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 139.

  The priority was to give: Gregory D. Johnsen, “60 Words and a War without End: The Untold Story of the Most Dangerous Sentence in U.S. History,” BuzzFeed, January 16, 2014. “Authorization for Use of Military Force in Response to the 9/11 Attacks (P.L. 107–40): Legislative History,” Richard F. Grimmett, Congressional Research Service, updated January 18, 2017. Addington “mostly sat out . . . the Authorization for the Use of Military Force” drafting, according to Gellman in Angler, 139.

  Once granted, the president’s: Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Yoo to the deputy counsel to the president, “The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Operations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting Them,” U.S. Department of Justice, September 25, 2001 www.justice.gov/file/19151/download. See also discussion in Charlie Savage, Takeover: The Return of The Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007), 121–22.

  A deeply religious Christian: George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.,” September 17, 2001. Transcript available at https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917-11.html.

  The result was a vague definition: Purdham, “Bush Warns of a Wrathful, Shadowy, Inventive War.” Peter Waldman and Hugh Pope, “ ‘Crusade’ Reference Reinforces Fears War on Terrorism Is against Muslims,” Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2001.

  Years later, after the consequences: Spencer Ackerman and Betsy Swan, “ ‘Homeland Security’ Ignores White Terror, DHS Veterans Say,” Daily Beast, October 31, 2018.

  The database would eventually: John Ashcroft, “Prepared Remarks on the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System,” June 6, 2002. Rights Working Group, Penn State Law Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, “The NSEERS Effect: A Decade of Racial Profiling, Fear and Secrecy,” May 2002. Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, “End the Shame of NSEERS” fact sheet. Leslie Bererstein Roja, “NSEERS and ‘Special Registration’ Are Gone, but Long-Term Effects Continue,” KPCC, January 30, 2012, www.scpr.org/blogs/multiamerican/2012/01/30/8161/nseers-and-special-registration-are-gone-but-long-, accessed February 24, 2021.

  That included cells equipped: Justice Department Office of the Inspector General, The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks, June 2003. Testimony of Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, Senate Judiciary Committee, June 25, 2003.

  It remains unknown, nearly: Nguyen, We Are All Suspects Now, 8.

  A San Antonio radiologist: Eric Lichtblau, Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice (New York: Anchor, 2009), 22.

  But after 9/11 the roundups: Lichtblau, Bush’s Law, Kindle location 235.

  The cleric opted instead to flee: Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (New York: Nation Books, 2013), 31–47. Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, “As American as Apple Pie: How Anwar al-Awlaki Became the Face of Western Jihad,” the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, 2011. J. M. Berger, “The Enduring Appeal of al-Awlaki’s ‘Constants on the Path of Jihad,’ ” Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, October 2011. Scott Shane, Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2016), 82–105.

  On October 25: Rep. Michael Oxley, comments at “Panel I of Hearing of the House Financial Services Committee; Subject: Terrorist Financing,” September 19, 2002. Feingold’s speech is posted at epic.org/privacy/terrorism/usapatriot/feingold.html, accessed July 20, 2020.

  “Our reactions to Adham”: Valdis Ozols, letter on behalf of Adham Hassoun, October 15, 2002.

  Some operated in mosques: Author’s interviews with Hassoun. Trevor Aaronsen, “The Informant,” Mother Jones, September–October 2011. Maria Dinzeo, “Ninth Circuit Orders New Look at Mosque Surveillance Case,” Courthouse News, February 28, 2019. Paul Harris, “The Ex-FBI Informant with a Change of Heart: ‘There Is No Real Hunt. It’s Fixed,’ ” Guardian, March 20, 2012.

  Tenet told Bush and Cheney: Peter Baker, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House (New York: Anchor, 2014), 163. The primary source for the next several paragraphs is a draft NSA inspector general history of STELLARWIND dated March 24, 2009. It was leaked by Edward Snowden. Available at www.theguardian.com/nsa-inspector-general-report-document-data-collection. “Although NSA had the capability to collect bulk telephony and internet metadata prior to the [program], its application was limited because NSA did not have the authority to collect communications in which one end [the number being called or the recipient address of an email] was in the United States,” 13.

  In his memoir, Playing to the Edge: Michael V. Hayden, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in The Age of Terror (New York: Penguin, 2017), 9.

  A volume the size: Cited in Barton Gellman, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State (New York: Penguin Press, 2020), 111. It appears Schmidt’s math may have been off in the service of a valid point. See Robert J. Moore, “Eric Schmidt’s ‘5 Exabytes’ Quote Is a Load of Crap,” February 7, 2011, blog.rjmetrics.com/2011/02/07/eric-
schmidts-5-exabytes-quote-is-a-load-of-crap, accessed July 21, 2020.

  In 2004, the CIA’s investment: Siobhan Gorman, “How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade,” Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2009.

  Its sophistication increased: Shane Harris, The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State (New York: Penguin, 2011), 158, and Gellman, Dark Mirror, 166–81.

  Hayden later observed: Alan Rusbridger, “The Snowden Leaks and the Public,” New York Review of Books, November 21, 2013.

  One internal memo: Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussein, “Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On,” The Intercept, July 9, 2014, https://theintercept.com/2014/07/09/under-surveillance.

  They interpreted Addington’s authorization: NSA inspector general’s draft report on STELLARWIND, March 24, 2009, 39.

  Hayden nevertheless considered: Letter from Rep. Nancy Pelosi to NSA director Michael Hayden, October 11, 2001, declassified January 3, 2006, pelosi.house.gov/news/press-releases/pelosi-s-declassified-letter-on-nsa-activities. Letter from Sen. Jay Rockefeller to Vice President Dick Cheney, July 17, 2003, fas.org/irp/news/2005/12/rock121905.pdf. Accessed July 21, 2020.

  For good measure Barr: Testimony of William P. Barr, House Intelligence Committee, October 30, 2003. Transcript available at https://fas.org/irp/congress/2003_hr/103003barr.pdf.

  The Justice Department prepared: Hayden, Playing to the Edge, 87. NSA draft internal STELLARWIND history, 38–39. Hayden appears to tell Bart Gellman in Dark Mirror that he only kept STELLARWIND going to fix it legally. That is not captured in the draft STELLARWIND history.