64 MBC reporter/“some news”/“coffin”: In the Footsteps of Bin Laden, 8/23/06, www.cnn.com, Bergen, OBL I Know, 284–. According to CIA reporting of KSM’s interrogations, KSM and Atef “were concerned about this lack of discretion and urged bin Laden not to make additional comments about the plot.” It seems odd then that Atef, normally described as having been professional, should have taken part in the MBC interview. He may have hoped at least to blur the truth by referring to the coming attacks as targeting “American and Israeli interests”—thus avoiding giving away the fact that the attack would be on U.S. territory. If that was his intention, the deception was successful—many in the U.S. had the impression that the attack would take place overseas (“were concerned”: KSM SUBST, Atef: CR, refs.; successful: e.g. CR, 256–).
65 impatient/Cole: KSM SUBST, e.g. Mehnaz Sahibzada, “The Symbolism of the Number 7 in Islamic Culture and Rituals,” www.wadsworth.com
66 dreams: e.g., Fouda & Fielding, 109, Lacey, Inside the Kingdom, 21, WP, 9/11/02
67 OBL bombarded/Sharon visit/Arafat not invited: KSM SUBST, NYT, 6/20/01
68 “big gift”: Bergen, OBL I Know, 284–.
69 “like Captain Ahab”: Richard Clarke, 234
70 “Clarke was driving”: Conclusions from Review of NSC papers, “Misc. 9/11 Commission Staff Notes About Drafting Final Report,” 16095055, CF
71 “When these attacks”: CR, 256
72 rated a seven: Tenet, 145–
73 was “recruiting”/high alert: CR, 256–
74 “very, very”/Clarke duly: CR, 257, Bamford, Shadow Factory, 55
75 July 10 assessment/“There will”/“put his elbows”: Tenet, 150–.
76 “felt”/“The decision”/“Adults”: Bob Woodward, State of Denial, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006, 49–. It seems clear from this passage—in his 2006 book, State of Denial—that he interviewed Cofer Black. Also, perhaps, former CIA director Tenet. While Woodward reported that Tenet left the meeting “feeling frustrated,” Tenet stated in his memoir the following year that Black and the head of the Agency’s bin Laden unit departed feeling that “at last … we had gotten the full attention of the administration.” Within two days, a congressional report shows, Tenet went to the Capitol to give a similar briefing to U.S. senators. Only a handful turned up. It was a mystery to him, Tenet wrote, why the 9/11 Commission Report failed to mention the July 10 meeting with Rice—he had told the commissioners about the encounter in closed testimony. It was established that Tenet had indeed told the Commission of the meeting. As others have noted, the Commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, was closer to Rice and other Bush appointees than was healthy for a man heading a supposedly even-handed investigation—he had even coauthored a book with Rice. According to 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, Tenet thought Rice “understood the level of urgency he was communicating.”
“It is shocking,” Peter Rundlet, a former Commission counsel, has written, “that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know. Many, many questions need to be asked and answered about this revelation” (meeting: Woodward, State of Denial, 50–, Tenet, 151–; congressional report: Report, “Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today,” Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 111th Cong., 1st Sess., U.S. Govt. Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 11/30/09, 4; indeed given: WP, 10/3/06; Zelikow: e.g., Shenon, 40–, 65–, 106–, Woodward, State of Denial, 52; understood: McClatchy Newspapers, 10/2/06; Rundlet: Peter Rundlet, “Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting from 9/11 Commission,” http://thinkprogress.org).
77 Black/Scheuer/UBL unit head resignations: MFR 03009296, 9/3/03, Shenon, 395, CR, 259–
78 “The purpose”/Williams concerns/Zubaydah/connected/Hanjour/Williams recommended: Phoenix, Squad 16 to Counterterrorism, 7/10/01, www.justice.gov, FBI IG, Statement of Eleanor Hill re “The FBI’s Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to Sept. 11, 2001,” 9/24/02 [as updated 10/17/02]. The suspicious activity on the America West flight, which may have been reconnaissance for the 9/11 operation, is described in Ch. 24
79 minimal circulation: NYT, 6/10/05, Amy B. Zegart, Spying Blind, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, 261n55
80 “racial profiling”: Report, JI, 5
81 “exercise”: NLETS Message (All Regions), from Counterterrorism, 7/2/01, INTELWIRE
82 “I had asked”: Richard Clarke, 236–.
83 “I don’t want”: The Justice Department told the Commission that Ashcroft, his former deputy, and his chief of staff denied that he had made such a comment to Pickard. Ashcroft himself also denied it in his April 2004 Commission testimony. Pickard, for his part, reiterated his allegation in testimony, in Commission interviews, in a letter to the commission—and in a later long interview with reporter Philip Shenon. The commission was unable to resolve the contradictory accounts. It found, though, that—whatever the truth about the Ashcroft/Pickard relationship, “The domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction, and did not have a plan” (Justice Dept./Ashcroft denials: Hearing transcript & Testimony of Ashcroft, 4/13/04, CO; Pickard: CR, 265, 536n52, Shenon, 246, 432n, Ch. 35).
84 “Fishing rod”/“Frankly”: CBS News, 7/26/01. Ashcroft and senior FBI officials had received recent briefings on the increased terrorist threat level. It is conceivable, however, that the decision that Ashcroft not fly commercial was taken because of threats of a different nature. From early on, reportedly, there had been threats to Ashcroft’s personal safety—sparked by his opposition to abortion and gun control (briefings: CR, 258, MFR 04019823, 6/3/04, e.g. Briefing Material, Weekly with Attorney General, 7/12/01, “Ashcroft,” B1, Dan Marcus files, CF; threats: Shenon, 243–).
85 G8 summit: CR, 258, Shenon, 243–
86 slept ships/Pope/airspace: BBC News, 6/21/01, CNN, 7/17/01, WP, 1/19/02, NYT, 9/26/01.
87 Mubarak: Benjamin & Simon, 342, Daily Record (Glasgow), 9/27/01. Warnings of a possible bin Laden attack at Genoa, specifically targeting Bush, also reportedly came from German and Russian intelligence. There were also concerns that violent protest might disturb public order during the summit (BBC News, 6/27/01, CNN, 7/17/01, but see also www.911myths.com/html/genoa_and_mubarak_s_warning.html).
CHAPTER 27
1 Dubai/passport copied: New Yorker, 7/10/06, Wright, 311, Report, JI, 144, but see Bamford, Shadow Factory, 18–.
2 CIA had not placed: In spite of the discovery of an internal CIA cable alleging that the visa information had been shared with the FBI, complex investigation did nothing to substantiate the assertion. Other documents, the 9/11 Commission reported, “contradict” the claim that the visa information was shared with the Bureau. The Commission flatly states that “no one alerted the INS or the FBI” to look for Mihdhar or his traveling companion, Nawaf al-Hazmi (CR, 502n44, 354, & see Tenet, 195).
3 Mihdhar/visas/July 4: Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, 33–, 37
4 two groups/NJ/Fort Lauderdale: CR, 230, 240, 248, 253, WP, 9/30/01, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE
5 Mihdhar/crammed: ibid., CR, 240–, McDermott, 221
6 Hazmi bride: CR, 222
7 marriage obligatory: Fouda & Fielding, 81, & see, e.g., “The Importance of Marriage in Islam,” www.sunniforum.com.
8 Atta: Chicago Tribune, 9/11/04, Newsweek, 10/1/01, Bernstein, 105, MFR 04017500, 12/4/03. In a 2004 book, author Daniel Hopsicker gave an account of a supposed relationship, covering periods in 2000 and 2001, between Atta and a young woman named Amanda Keller. Widely circulated on the Internet, the account presents a picture of a deeply unpleasant character who—were the account to prove accurate—frequented sleazy nightspots, beat his girlfriend, and—in one savage incident—killed and dismembered one of her cats and an entire litter
of kittens. After lengthy analysis of a tangled scenario, however, the authors concluded that this has been a matter of mistaken identity. A young woman who—according to the Hopsicker account—accompanied Atta and Keller on a trip to the Florida Keys did not recognize pictures of the authentic Atta as the “Mohamed” who made the trip. Keller’s mother and sister are reported as having said that her Mohamed was “tall,” “lanky,” while Atta was only five foot seven. She said early on her boyfriend was French Canadian, and that he told her he had fathered a child in France. That could of course have been a lie—except for another element. According to Keller, the name her Mohamed used at one point to sign a document was “Mohamed Arajaki”—and an official list of men of interest to law enforcement after 9/11 includes a reference to an “Arakj, Mohamad” with a French address.
In the transcript of a long interview with Hopsicker, Keller refers to her sometime boyfriend only as Mohamed, not as Atta or as definitely having been Atta. Press reports of interviews with Keller, moreover, have twice thrown doubt on the notion that her boyfriend was future hijacker Atta. Phone checks, said a counterterrorism agent cited in the second report—in 2006—indicated that the real Atta and Keller never called each other. Keller herself was quoted in that report as saying her Mohamed had been “another flight student not connected to 9/11.” If she had given the impression that he was the real Atta, she reportedly said, that had been “my bad for lying.… I really didn’t think about it until after I did it.” The authors did not succeed in reaching Keller for interview. (Hopsicker account: Hopsicker, refs., Keller videotape seen by authors, transcript provided by Hopsicker; trip to Keys: ints. & corr. Linda Lopez; “tall”/“lanky”: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/24/01; 5′7″: Temporary Airman Certificate, “Airman Records,” B45, T5, CF; “Arajaki”: Hopsicker, 76; list: AP, 10/12/01, list inadvertently released first in Finland, later in Italy, in authors’ collection; press reports: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/23/01, 9/10/06; in addition, relevant authors’ interviews included Elaine Emrich, Stephanie Frederickson, Vicky Keyser, Earle Kimel, Tony & Vonnie LaConca, and Neil Patton).
9 injections: NYT, 4/25/11
10 KSM stipend: CR, 518n40.
11 muslimmarriage.com: MFR of int. [name redacted], 2/23/04, CF. Two of the hijack pilots had married or gone through a form of marriage. As early as 1999, Jarrah and his girlfriend, Aysel, took part in a wedding ceremony at a Hamburg mosque, and—though she would later say she did not consider it binding (the marriage was not registered with the state)—Aysel referred to herself in a letter as Jarrah’s “yearning wife.” Under pressure from his family, Shehhi had married during a trip back to the United Arab Emirates in early 2000—only to decline to go through with the relationship afterward. Mohamed Atta’s father, meanwhile, was to say he found his son a prospective wife who was “nice and delicate, the daughter of a former ambassador.” By one account, Atta agreed to get engaged to the woman in 1999—but any prospect of the union becoming a reality vanished with his extended stay in Germany and growing commitment to jihad. One account holds that Atta spoke of marrying a Turk rather than an Egyptian, because he thought Turkish women “more obedient.” Binalshibh, for his part, picked up a young woman—believed to have been a Japanese Roman Catholic!—in 2000, and proposed within twenty-four hours. She would have to dress and behave in the way required of a Muslim wife, he told her, and that their children would have to be brought up to hate Jews. Though they never met again after the initial five-day interlude, Binalshibh later wrote her emails signed: “Your King, Ramzi.” Records, meanwhile, indicate that two of the muscle hijackers, Banihammad and Omari, were married (Jarrah: McDermott, 78–; Shehhi: ibid., 54, Corbin, 224, Berlin to Counterterrorism, 12/5/03, FBI 315N-WF-227135, INTELWIRE; Atta: Newsweek, 10/1/01, Bernstein, 105, MFR 04017500, 12/4/03, CF; Binalshibh: McDermott, 199–; Banihammad: Riyadh to Counterterrorism, 10/15/01, FBI 265A-NY-280350, Misc. Request 54, “Aliases and Ids,” B62, T5, CF; Omari: Visa Application, 6/8/01, www.oldnationalreview.com).
12 fishing: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE
13 Wacko’s: ibid., “Exclusive: 9/11 Hijacker Stayed at Jacksonville Hotel,” www.firstcoastnews.com.
14 lap dancing/movies/sex toys: “Agents of Terror Leave Mark on Sin City,” 10/4/01, www.sfgate.com, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, FBI report, “The 11 September Hijacker Cell Model,” 2/03, released under FOIA to INTELWIRE. Shehhi’s reported visit to a lap dancing club occurred during a trip to Las Vegas, reported later in this chapter. Earlier, in California in 2000, Hazmi and Mihdhar had also reportedly visited strip clubs. The hijacker who visited the Adult Lingerie Center was Majed Moqed (Shehhi: San Francisco Chronicle, 10/4/01; Hazmi/Mihdhar: LAT, 9/11/02, Newsweek, 6/10/02, 10/15/01; Moqed: Newsday, 9/23/01, Newsweek, 10/15/01, WP, 9/30/01, summary re Majed Moqed, JICI, 4/19/02, FBI03135, www.scribd.com).
15 Jarrah to Germany: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE
16 Rodriguez/“very humble”: Jeffrey Steinberg, “Cheney’s ‘Spoon-Benders’ Pushing Nuclear Armegeddon,” 8/26/05, Executive Intelligence Review, eds. Der Spiegel, 104–
17 fitness classes: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, “Hijackers’ True Name Usage,” U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit 0G0013
18 knives: “Hijacker Knife Purchases,” B18, T7, CF
19 Hortman: MFR 04018712, 4/27/04, & MFR 04018407, 4/12/04, CF, Staff Statement 16, CO
20 Hanjour Hudson/practice flight DC: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Staff Statement 16, CO.
21 familiarize routine/Vegas, etc.: “Hijackers’ True Name Usage,” U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit 0G0013, Report, JI, 139, MFR, 04016230 [Las Vegas Investigative Summary, undated], MFR 04018564, 1/5/04, MFR 04016240, 1/5/04, & MFR 04016244, 1/5/04, CF. Jarrah was accompanied in Las Vegas by an older fellow Arab. The unidentified Arab resembled the “uncle” who had accompanied him days earlier when he rented a small plane at a Philadelphia airport (MFR 04016240, 1/5/04, MFR 04016239, 1/5/04, CF).
22 74 times: McDermott, 222, MFR 04019351, 12/10–11/03, CF
23 knives: MFR 04019351, 12/10–11/03, CF.
24 needed talk/rendezvous Europe/Spain: CR, 243–, 530n145. The Commission Report suggests that the pair talked at a hotel not far from Cambrils, near Barcelona, and that Atta rented accommodations in the area until July 19. The experienced author Edward Epstein, who had interviewed prominent Spanish investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzón, wrote in a 2007 article that Atta and Binalshibh “dropped from sight leaving no hotel records, cellphone logs or credit-card receipts” from July 9 to July 16. Judge Garzón reasoned that they spent that time at a prearranged safe house organized by a Spanishbased Algerian accomplice and al Qaeda activists in Spain. Phone intercepts showed that Binalshibh was in touch with the Algerian a few weeks later. Other intercepts indicated that the Germany-based Syrian suspect Marmoun Darkazanli (see Ch. 24) was in Spain at approximately the same time. Binalshibh would claim under interrogation that he met no one but Atta in Spain (Cambrils: CR, 244, 530n145; “dropped”/Algerian accomplice: Edward J. Epstein, “The Spanish Connection,” 2/22/07, www.opinionjournal.com, LAT, 1/14/03, CNN, 10/31/01; Darkazanli: LAT, 1/14/03; Binalshibh: CR, 244).
25 OBL wanted/security/“symbols”/“preferred”: Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” CO, 207, 244
26 WH too tough/streets: CR, 244
27 “in the hands”: KSM SUBST
28 necklaces/phones: CR, 245.
29 Atta admitted: Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” CO, 38. If the identifications made by witnesses at the Pelican Alley restaurant in Venice, Florida, are accurate, then Atta and Shehhi may have been back in Venice in late July—with a dark-complexioned companion—engaged in what appeared to be a heated argument (ints. Tom & Renee Adorna, Jeff Pritko).
30 drop out?/called Aysel/ticket/“emotional”: CR, 246–, Staff Statement 16, CO, MFR 04019350, 3/18
/04, CR, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE.
31 Binalshibh told KSM: How we come to know about this exchange, which was conducted on the phone, will be discussed in Ch. 30. If meant literally, the reference to cost in the conversation is odd (and perhaps merely code) unless, as the Commission was to surmise, KSM was referring to the cost and trouble of organizing a replacement hijacking pilot. The notional replacement, the commission thought, was likely Zacarias Moussaoui, the French-born terrorist who had been sent to the United States for pilot training early in 2001. During his conversation with Binalshibh, KSM authorized the sending of “skirts” to “Sally,” an instruction believed to mean that Binalshibh was to send Moussaoui $14,000. Binalshibh did so in early August. According to KSM, however, he at no stage contemplated using Moussaoui as a pilot on the 9/11 operation, but rather in a later “second wave” of attacks. As will emerge later in this chapter, Moussaoui would be detained in August because of his suspect behavior at a flight school in Minnesota (CR, 246–, Indictment, 12/01 & Superceding Indictment, 7/02, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Staff Statement 16, CO).
32 “We spent”: Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection
33 apartment: Jarrah timeline, “03009470, Packet 6, Ziad Jarrah chronology,” www.scribd.com
34 “This House”: Newsweek, 9/24/01
35 “big planes”: int. Rosmarie Canel by Hannah Cleaver
36 GPS: Jarrah timeline
The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden Page 69