44 Corolla/personal belongings/investigative treasure/involvement in aviation: “Nawaf al-Hazmi,” FBI summary, 4/19/02, www.scribd.com, Warrant Issued on Vehicle IDJT2AE92E9J3137546, 9/13/01, “FBI 302s of Interest,” B17, T7, CF, Criminal Complaint, U.S. v. Mohamed Abdi, Case No. 01–1053-M, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 9/23/01, MFR 04016253, 10/16/03, San Diego to Ottawa et al., 4/11/02, Leads from Hijackers’ Cars, INTELWIRE, “Ali Ahmad Mesdaq,” 1/28/02, FBI Document re PENTTBOM, INTELWIRE. Also recovered, at Newark Airport, was a red Mitsubishi Galant rented by Ziad Jarrah. Jarrah, a Lebanese citizen, is believed to have led the hijack team on United Flight 93. Though the car contained far less evidence than did Hazmi’s, agents did recover a speeding ticket Jarrah had incurred in the early hours of September 10. In a trash can at Newark’s Days Inn, meanwhile, the FBI found the used Spirit Airlines ticketing that had brought Jarrah and Saudis Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Ahmad al-Haznawi from Fort Lauderdale to Newark on September 7. Other evidence aside, the joint travel before 9/11 indicated that the four men shared a common purpose (Ziad Jarrah summary, Prepared by UA93 Investigative Team, FBI, 4/19/02, www.scribd.com, Evidence Inspected at FBI HQ 5/14/04, “Breeder Documents,” B8, T7, CF, Longman, 101).
45 duffel bags: MFR 04017509, 11/5/03, “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, San Diego Union-Tribune, 9/3/02;
46 Portland car: Evidence Inspected at FBI HQ, 5/14/04, “Breeder Documents,” B8, T5, CF;
47 manuals: “Ziad Jarrah,” FBI summary, www.scribd.com;
48 “Everybody was gathered”: int. Mark Mikarts;
49 “It was the sort”/“His bearing”: Birmingham Post (U.K.), 9/25/01, Jane Corbin, The Base, London: Pocket, 2003, 162;
50 Dekkers: transcript of interview of Rudi Dekkers, ibid., News-Press (Fort Myers, FL), 9/13/01.
51 Atta luggage: Review of Investigation Conducted by the FBI of Atta’s Suitcases at Boston, 2/10/04, “Detainee Reports,” B53, T5, CF, FBI 302 of [redacted] DePasquale, 9/17/01, “Atta Luggage,” B18, T7, CF, Recovered Identification Documents, “Breeder Documents,” B8, T5, CF. Also in Atta’s bag were a folding knife and some First Defense pepper spray. Omari’s bag contained an Arabic-to-English dictionary, English grammar books, his Saudi passport, and a bank checkbook (Recovered Identification Documents, “Breeder Docs.—Entire Contents,” B8, T5, CF, MFR of Review of Investigation by the FBI of Atta’s suitcases at Boston, 2/10/04, “Detainee Reports,” B53, T5, CF).
52 document in luggage/at Dulles/at 93 site: “Synopsis of Captioned Investigation as of 11/4/01,” PENTTBOM, Major Case 182, 11/5/01, authors’ collection. The document has been variously referred to as having five, four, and three pages. The first report, by Bob Woodward in The Washington Post, had it as five. A 2006 study, by Professor Hans Kippenberg and Professor Tilman Seidensticker, suggests that a fifth page was recovered but not published. CBS News, which reported on a copy of the Dulles Airport document, said it was “similar but not identical to the document found in Atta’s luggage, and parts of a document found in the Pennsylvania wreckage” (Woodward: WP, 9/28/01; four: eds. Hans Kippenberg & Tilman Seidensticker, The 9/11 Handbook, London: Equinox, 2006, 1–, Observer [London], 9/30/01; three: “PENTTBOM, Major case 182, Summary of Captioned Investigation as of 11/4/01,” FBI document, 11/5/01; CBS News: “Translated Text: Hijackers’ How-To,” www.cbsnews.com, 10/1/01).
53 Commission not mention: Congress’s Joint Inquiry report on the attacks did cite a statement by FBI director Mueller including the fact that a “three-page letter handwritten in Arabic” had been found, and stating that it contained “instructions on how to prepare for a mission applicable, but not specific, to the September 11 operation” (JI, Report, 142–, Statement of Robert Mueller, 9/25/02, www.fas.org).
54 “Spiritual Manual”/“Handbook”/“mutual pledge”: all from the translation in eds. Kippenberg & Seidensticker, 11–. There have been several translations and commentaries of the document the FBI released. The authors of this book have relied primarily on the 2006 book The 9/11 Handbook, by Hans Kippenberg, professor of Comparative Religious Studies at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, and Tilman Seidensticker, professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. There have been other commentaries of note—by Professor Kanan Makiya of Brandeis University and Hassan Mneimneh, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, and David Cook, an associate professor at Rice University. In their book Masterminds of Terror, Al Jazeera’s Yosri Fouda and The Sunday Times’s Nick Fielding reported Fouda’s 2002 interview of self-confessed 9/11 conspirator Ramzi Binalshibh—which offered confirmation that the “Spiritual Manual” is authentic. All the sources mentioned treat the document as having been written for the 9/11 hijackers. The translators of the version used by CBS News in 2001, however, stated in a note that the document did “not in any way sound like instructions to a hijacker or a terrorist.” In the context of its content and circumstances of discovery, however, the document can only be pertinent to 9/11 (Kanan Makiya & Hassan Mneimneh, “Manual for a Raid,” NY Review of Books, 1/17/02, Yosri Fouda & Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2003, 141–, Juan Cole, “Al Qaeda’s Doomsday Document and Psychological Manipulation,” 4/9/03, www.juancole.com, David Cook, Understanding Jihad, Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 2005, 195–, “Translated Text: Hijackers How-To,” 10/1/01, www.cbsnews.com).
55 manual: FBI press release, 9/28/01, www.fbi.gov;
56 re “q”/Qiblah: Fouda & Fielding, 147;
57 “To those who”: corr. Hans Kippenberg, 2010. Some, pointing to anomalies in the document, have raised the possibility that the hijackers’ manual might be a forgery. Professor Kippenberg, however, who has conducted the most in-depth analysis, cites a skein of persuasive evidence to the contrary (anomalies: e.g., Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization, London: Fourth Estate, 2005, 1039–;
58 evidence: Kippenberg, 4–).
59 “We believe”: Telegraph (U.K.), 9/13/01, int. of Jamal Ismael for Palladin InVision, 2006, supplied to author, WP, 12/9/01, Peter L. Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, New York: Free Press, 2006, 312;
60 “I would like”/Taliban accepted: CNN, 9/17/01;
61 “As a Muslim”: Daily Ummat (Karachi), 9/28/01, www.justresponse.net;
62 “Whenever we kill”/“As concerns”: ed. Bruce Lawrence, Messages to the World, London: Verso, 2005, 106–.
63 On the eve: The night before the attacks, according to a CBS News report citing Pakistani intelligence sources, bin Laden entered a military hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, for kidney dialysis. This report appears to have been unfounded. There was an oft-repeated story that he required dialysis, but the best evidence is that he did not. Al Qaeda operatives’ accounts, moreover, place bin Laden at a camp in Afghanistan the following morning, September 11 (CBS news, 1/28/02, and see notes for Ch. 30, pp. 548–49);
64 call to mother/“In two days”/“I would never”: NYT, 10/2/01, MSNBC, 10/1/01, Mail on Sunday (U.K.), 12/23/01.
65 “I asked Osama”: Mir quoted in Georgie Anne Geyer, “Reporting on Terrorist Can Be Deadly,” http://sentinelsource.com, 6/28/09, but see Bergen, OBL I Know, 319, corr. Peter Bergen, 2010. The only other post-9/11 interview bin Laden gave was for television, with Taysir Alluni of Al Jazeera. Alluni was later arrested in his home country, Spain, on charges of supporting al Qaeda, and not released until 2005. Only in 2007, on an audiotape that a U.S. official judged authentic at the time would bin Laden clearly admit responsibility for 9/11. The voice believed to be his on the tape said, “The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance’s aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that” (Alluni: ed. Lawrence, 106–, 139–; 2007 tape: msnbc.com, 11/29/07).
CHAPTER 15
This is a transi
tional chapter, and the majority of episodes described in it will be more fully covered and sourced in later chapters. For that reason, there is reference in the sources below only to points that will not be covered elsewhere.
1 “Without conspiracy”/“Official answers”: Nation, 5/31/02, 7/12/02.
2 “No one has taken”: Richard Falkenrath, “The 9/11 Commission Report: a Review Essay,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 3, Winter 04/05, Shenon, 392, 438n, & see CounterPunch, 2/23/08, WP, 7/13/08. The rather larger death toll figure of 2,973, used by the authors in the Prologue, was the official figure as of 2011.
3 “Why did”: int. of Patrick Leahy by Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org, 9/29/06;
4 “As each day”: NYT, 10/26/03;
5 “officials from FAA”: Statement of Bogdan Dzakovic, 5/22/03, CO;
6 half summaries/“encouraged”/no drive: Farmer, 98–, Staff Statement 3, CO;
7 “bad feeling”: Chicago, 3/11;
8 “I’ve been with”: New York Observer, 6/20/04.
9 “September the 11th”: ABC News, 12/19/02. The fellow agent was John Vincent, the assistant U.S. attorney Mark Flessner. The 9/11 Commission did not interview any of the three.
10 “more than”: Phoenix, Squad 16 to Counterterrorism, 7/10/01, www.justice.gov;
11 “well-managed”: WP, 8/21/07;
12 “no examination”: Executive Summary, “Report on CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks,” Office of the Inspector General, Central Intelligence Agency, 6/05;
13 “points”/“Both the CIA”: Graham with Nussbaum, xv;
14 irritated: Tenet, 169.
15 Mossad: The Mossad—more formally the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations—can and does operate all over the world, emboldened by the knowledge that the United States is Israel’s staunch ally and protector. Mossad’s audacity was exemplified as recently as 2010, when its operatives were caught using the forged passports of several other nations in the course of a hit on a Hamas leader in Dubai.
The full extent of Israeli and U.S. liaison on intelligence, however, is a foggy area. Days after 9/11, the Telegraph newspaper in the U.K., citing a “senior Israeli security official,” reported that “two senior experts” with Mossad had been sent to Washington in August to warn that a large terrorist cell was “preparing a big operation.” The Los Angeles Times picked up the story, only to amend it within days and publish a CIA denial that there had been such a warning.
The authors looked at specific episodes that have been taken to suggest Israeli intelligence activity within the United States at the time. One occurred on the morning of 9/11, when a woman in a New Jersey apartment across the river from Manhattan telephoned the police. She had seen below her a group of men, on the roof of a van, shooting video footage of the burning Trade Center and—she thought—celebrating. Film taken from the men’s camera, sources said later, did appear to show them “smiling and clowning around.” The onlooker who called the police reported the van’s registration number, noting that it was marked “Urban Moving Systems.”
Arrested that afternoon, the men with the van turned out to be five young Israelis. They were held for more than two months, questioned repeatedly, and eventually deported back to Israel. Their boss, Dominic Suter, also an Israeli, abruptly left the United States soon after the attacks. Two of the men, it was later reported, had been Mossad operatives and one—Paul Kurtzberg—said he had previously worked for Israeli intelligence in another country.
Former CIA counterterrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro told ABC News that—though the men “probably” did not have advance knowledge of 9/11—there was speculation in U.S. intelligence that Urban Moving was a front for spying on “radical Islamics in the area.” Available information indicates that the Israelis had been living and working in New Jersey within a few miles of locations where Hazmi, Mihdhar, and four other members of the hijacking team had spent from spring to midsummer.
A study by lawyer Gerald Shea, submitted to the 9/11 Commission and the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, drew attention to the odd activities in 2000 and 2001 of more than a hundred Israelis—working in groups of eight to ten across the United States, who had represented themselves as art students peddling artwork. Because the “students” were repeatedly noticed at Drug Enforcement Administration offices, DEA Security investigated—and came to suspect the “students” might be involved in organized crime.
Lawyer Shea, though, noted that those identified had primarily operated in Florida—close to the main southern staging area for the hijackers. He suggested in his study that the Israelis’ purpose had included “keeping Arab groups in our country under surveillance, including the future hijackers.” There is good reason to doubt Shea’s theory, however, for the Israeli students also operated in states where the hijackers had not been located.
The puzzling incident of the New Jersey Israelis, however, did deserve serious public examination. Yet the possible role of Israeli intelligence in the 9/11 case—at any level—has been investigated by no official body (Dubai: NYT, 2/18/10; “senior Israeli”: Telegraph [U.K.], 9/16/01, LAT, 9/20/01, 9/21/01; men on van: 20/20, ABC News, 6/21/02—transcript available at www.911myths.com, Forward, 2/3/03, CounterPunch, 3/07/07; “art students”: Gerald Shea, “Israeli Surveillance of the Future Hijackers and FBI Suspects in the Sept. 11 Attacks,” Memorandum to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States et al., 9/15/04. Also, see Justin Raimondo, The Terror Enigma, NY: iUniverse, 2003).
16 “hostile service”: James Risen, State of War, NY: Free Press, 2006, 181.
CHAPTER 16
1 “BUSH CALLS”/memorial service, etc./“After all”: int. Ari Fleischer by Scott Pelley, 8/6/02, & by Terry Moran, 8/9/02, “EOP Press Interviews,” B1, T3, CF, NYT, 9/15/01, “With the President: A Reporter’s Story of 9/11,” www.rochester.edu;
2 “hunt down”: CNN, 9/12/01;
3 “We’re gonna”: Sammon, 113;
4 McWilliams/flag: “Raising the Flag at the WTC,” www.famouspictures.org, “About the Photo,” www.groundzerospirit.org, DiMarco, 181fn;
5 memorial service/“Battle Hymn”: ABC News video at www.youtube.com, int. Condoleezza Rice by Bob Woodward, 10/24/01, “Farmer Misc.,” B9, NYC files, CF;
6 “monumental”: “Remarks by the President,” 9/12/01, www.avalon.law.yale.edu. See Note re death toll in sourcing for Preface. Accounts differ on the authorship of the President’s speech and the way it developed. Gerson aside, aides involved Bush’s counselor Karen Hughes, and speechwriters Matthew Scully and David Frum (WP, 1/27/02, “Present at the Creation,” Atlantic, 9/07, “The President’s Story,” 9/11/02, www.cbsnews.com, Nation, 2/13/03, David Frum, The Right Man, NY: Random House, 2003, 142, Michael Gerson, Heroic Conservatism, NY: HarperOne, 2007, 69);
7 war council: CR, 330;
8 Muttawakil: “Defending Bin Laden,” www.newsweek.com, 9/11/01;
9 Taliban propose: Foreign Policy Journal, 8/12/09;
10 “We’re not only”: int. Ari Fleischer by Scott Pelley;
11 never considered: int. Condoleezza Rice by Bob Woodward;
12 ultimatum: “Bush Delivers Ultimatum,” www.unwire.org, 9/21/01;
13 rejected: LAT, 9/22/01.
14 Musharraf: Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, NY: Free Press, 2006, 201–. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, and the 2006 biography of Colin Powell, Musharraf complied with all the U.S. demands. In a memoir the same year, Musharraf said he balked at permitting the U.S. military “blanket overflight and landing rights” and “use of Pakistan’s naval ports, air bases and strategic locations on borders.” Instead, he wrote, he offered “only a narrow flight corridor” and “only two bases … for logistics and aircraft recovery.” Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who delivered the American demands, for his part denied that he had threatened to bomb Pakistan. There was clearly massive pressure, however. In the words of CIA director Tenet, Armitage “dropped t
he hammer on them” (CR, 331–, Karen DeYoung, Soldier, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006, 349, Tenet, 179).
15 “Need to move”: Notes of Stephen Cambone, 9/11/01, released under FOIA to Thad Anderson, www.outragedmoderates.com;
16 “I know”: DOD press conference, 9/18/01, www.defenselink.mil;
17 “urged the President”: CR, 330, 558n34;
18 OBL/hijackers Saudis: Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Travel,” CO.
19 “do Iraq”: CR, 335, Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004, 26. The need to “do Iraq” is referred to in Ch. 9, p. 87. As noted there, it is not clear whether Rumsfeld spoke of “doing” Iraq on the night of 9/11 or at a meeting the following day. “Look”: Richard Clarke, 32–, CR, 334 & see Ben-Veniste, 302;
20 Pressure to act: CR, 334–, MFR of int. Colin Powell, 1/21/04, CF;
21 formal order: Woodward, Plan of Attack, 26;
22 contingency plan: CR, 335, Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO, & see MFR 04021460, 4/9/04. The most vocal proponent of hitting Iraq was Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz. To Secretary of State Powell, it seemed that “some of his colleagues were trying to use the events of 9/11 to promote their own policy obsessions and settle old scores” (MFR of Colin Powell, 1/21/04, CF, DeYoung, 348–, CR, 335–).
23 176–77 Camp David/prayer: DeYoung, 350–;
The Eleventh Day Page 58