The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden
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71 Bayoumi favorable/stuck to story: Shenon, 309–, MFR of int. Omar al-Bayoumi, 10/18/03, CF
72 Zelikow think not agent: Zelikow to Shenon, 10/18/07, www.philipshenon.com
73 distinguishing mark: CR, 516n19
74 salary approved/picture found: Report, JI, 174 & see Staff Statement 16, DOCEX 199-HQ-1361032, “Hijacker Primary Docs, PENTTBOM Memo re CD found,” B50, T5, CF
75 “cleansed”/“deceptive”: MFR 04019367, 2/24/04, Snell, De, & Jacobson to Zelikow, 2/25/04, CF
76 “the witness’ utter”: MFR int. of Osama Basnan, 10/22/03, CF.
77 Hussayen/Mosques/in States: WSJ, 2/10/03. In October 2001 the FBI began an investigation of Hussayen’s nephew Sami. He eventually became the first person to be charged under the broadened “material support” for terrorism provisions of the then new USA Patriot Act. The government sought to prove that Hussayen used his expertise as an Internet “webmaster” to further the cause of terrorists and promote violent jihad. The hard drive of a computer he had used, according to an agent’s testimony, contained “thousands” of photographs, of the World Trade Center, of the Pentagon, and of planes hitting buildings. Sami Hussayen was eventually found not guilty and returned to Saudi Arabia (Second Superceding Indictment, U.S. v. Sami Omar al Hussayen, U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, AP, 3/12/03, Dept. of Justice press release, “Indictments Allege Illegal Financial Transfers to Iraq; Visa Fraud Involving Assistance to Groups that Advocate Violence,” 2/26/03, www.usdoj.gov, Seattle Times, 11/22/04).
78 Marriott Sept. 10/“muttering”/Paramedics/“faking”/kitchenette/“I don’t”: MFR 04017480, 10/9/03, MFR 04017486, 10/9/03, MFR 04017482, 10/9/03, MFR 04019354, CF, WSJ, 2/10/03, Telegraph (U.K.), 10/2/03, WP, 10/2/03, 3/12/03
79 Aulaqi contact/move: See pp. 291–92
80 son of minister: Dallas Morning News, 12/25/09
81 preached Capitol: NYT, 5/8/10, Fox News, 11/11/10
82 lunched Pentagon: NY Daily News, 10/21/10
83 remained U.S.: WSJ, 2/10/03, ABC News, 11/30/09
84 phone number/Binalshibh: Report, JI, 178
85 Fort Hood/Detroit bomb/Times Square/cargo planes: Christian Science Monitor, 5/19/10, Fox News, 10/20/10, CNN, 1/7/10, Guardian (U.K.), 10/31/10, MSNBC, 11/1/10
86 capture or kill: Christian Science Monitor, 5/19/10, NYT, 4/6/10
87 “loose end”: McClatchy News, 11/21/09.
88 Sarasota gated community/al-Hijji: For more than six months, since immediately after the authors’ first extended interview with the counterterrorist officer, the authors worked on this part of the story with Florida investigative reporter, and founder of the Broward Bulldog, Dan Christensen. We also benefited from the collaboration of Neil Tweedie at The Daily Telegraph in the U.K. See authors’ articles with Christensen in: Miami Herald, 9/7/11, BrowardBulldog.org, 9/7/11, 9/16/11, 11/8/11, 2/18/12, 3/13/12, 3/14/12, Daily Telegraph (U.K.), 2/18/12, MSNBC, 3/12/12, 3/13/12, & see 3/14/12, FDLE Investigative Reports released to Dan Christensen, ints. Larry Berberich, Bob Graham
89 series of denials: FBI spokesperson Kathy Wright to Dan Christensen, 9/6/11, Agent Dave Courvertier to Christensen, 9/13/11, Agent Steven Ibison to St. Petersburg Times, reported 9/15/11, Section Chief David Hardy to Christensen, 2/7/12, FBI to the Daily Beast, reported 3/13/12
90 National Archives: corr. Kristen Wilhelm, 2012, ints./corr. Bob Graham
91 Hammoud: FDLE Investigative Reports, U.S. v. Wissam Taysir Hammoud, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of FL, Tampa Div., Dan Christensen ints./corr. Wissam Hammoud & family members
92 Southampton: al-Hijjis’ rental agreement, int. landlord
93 Al-Hijji replied: int. by author Summers & Neil Tweedie of Daily Telegraph (U.K.)
94 denied: corr. Neil Tweedie, 2/12
95 FBI has said: e.g., FBI to St. Petersburg Times, 9/15/11
96 attorney: Christensen int. Scott McKay
97 Beirut: Warranty Deed, File No. 1027–325924, Sarasota, FL, Circuit Court, Instrument 2003204043, filed 10/7/03.
98 “most important”: ibid. Aside from what is reported in these pages about Saudis allegedly visited by the terrorists in Florida, the authors note one other lead. In a lengthy taped interview, a former Venice Yellow Cab driver named Bob Simpson has described having picked up a “wealthy Saudi businessman” at Orlando Executive Airport and, later the same day, having taken him to an apartment building where he had previously picked up Mohamed Atta. After 9/11, Simpson said, the FBI questioned him about the Saudi. Simpson did work for Yellow Cab in 2001, but the authors’ efforts to trace him were unsuccessful (videotape & transcript in the collection of Daniel Hopsicker).
99 “that the Saudis”: int. Bob Graham.
100 did not name once: Zelikow Afterword, CR (abridged), NY: W. W. Norton, 2011, 504
101 “did not find”/“persuasive evidence”: Zelikow to Shenon, 10/18/07, www.philipshenon.com. The Commission, according to its Report, believed that al Qaeda likely did have “agents” in California, “one or more individuals informed in advance” of Mihdhar and Hazmi’s arrival (“agents”: CR, 215).
102 page 396: Report, JI, 395–
103 CIA not obstruct: corr. office of Bob Graham, 2009
104 Bush himself: ibid., Graham with Nussbaum, 228, 215–, 231, NYT, 6/24/09, Salon, 9/8/04
105 Pelosi: CNN, 7/30/03
106 “I went back”: Nation, 7/29/03.
107 should be made public: Prince Bandar, then ambassador to Washington, said in 2003 that there was nothing to hide, and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said it was an “outrage to any sense of fairness that 28 blank pages are now considered substantial evidence to proclaim the guilt of a country.” The Saudis, it was suggested, saw publication of the classified material as “a chance to clear their Kingdom’s name.” Senator Graham did not buy it. “It seemed to me,” he has written, “that George W. Bush and Prince Bandar were performing a sort of good cop–bad cop routine, in which Prince Bandar got to claim innocence of behalf of Saudi Arabia, while George W. Bush protected him by being the bad cop who wouldn’t release troubling information” (Bandar: “Saudi Ambassador Responds to Reports of Saudi Involvement in 9/11,” 7/24/03, www.saudiembassy.net; “outrage”: AP, 7/29/03; “a chance”: AP, 7/30/03; “It seemed”: Graham with Nussbaum, 228–).
108 “I can’t tell you”: int. Eleanor Hill
109 leaks/details/“central figure”/“very direct”/“cannot be”/Graham/“apparent”: Newsweek, 2/3/03, LAT, 8/2/03, Shenon, 50–, 308–, AP, 7/27/03, NYT, 8/1/03
110 Zubaydah waterboarded June/July: int. of CIA OIG John Helgerson, Der Spiegel, 8/31/09, “Yoo’s Legal Memos Gave Bush Retroactive Cover for Torture,” 2/23/09, http://pubrecord.org, BBC News, 7/13/09.
111 Kiriakou/Zubaydah: As reported, what Kuriakou learned about Zubaydah’s references to the princes came to him not firsthand but from those reading the cable traffic. For that reason and because of the passage of time, he told the authors, he is today unsure whether the Zubaydah/princes element first surfaced during interrogation or because he was questioned about something found in the journal Zubaydah had kept.
Refuting suggestions that Zubaydah may not have given good information, or that he may even have been mentally unstable, Kiriakou said he thought the contrary was true, that he did give reliable information and was “not crazy” but “bright, well-read, a good conversationalist.”
Kiriakou was indicted in January 2012, accused of having disclosed classified information about Zubaydah to reporters. The complaint also alleged that he had lied to the CIA’s Publication Review Board when submitting the manuscript for his memoir.
The Kiriakou interview for this book is first corroboration of the core elements of an account written by author Gerald Posner in 2003, with different detail and citing only anonymous sources. The Posner account, according to Kiriakou, got important detail and chronology skewed. The relevant interrogation of Zubaydah that prod
uced the lead about the Saudi prince did not occur—as Posner wrote—within days of his capture but only months later, after he had been waterboarded. (This would fit with the account of FBI investigator Ali Soufan, who took part in interrogations of Zubaydah until June. During that early period, the link to the Saudi princes did not come up.)
As reported by Posner, Zubaydah was tricked into believing that he had been moved from U.S. to Saudi custody—in hopes that fear of the truly gruesome torture practiced in Saudi Arabia would lead him to start talking. Instead, by the Posner account, he seemed relieved and promptly urged his “Saudi” interrogators to telephone Prince Ahmed bin Salman—even providing the prince’s phone numbers from memory. Prince Ahmed, he said, “will tell you what to do.” Later, according to Posner’s account, he added the names and numbers of the two other princes. Bin Laden, Zubaydah reportedly said, had made a point of letting the Saudi royals know in advance, without sharing details, that there was going to be an attack on the United States on September 11.
Again according to Posner, the CIA decided to share what Zubaydah had said with Saudi intelligence, with a request that it probe further. New York Times journalist and author James Risen added a new detail in 2006. When Zubaydah was captured, sources told Risen, he had on his person two bank cards, one from a Saudi bank and another from an institution in Kuwait. American investigators worked through a Muslim financier to check on the accounts, only to be frustrated. There no longer was a way to trace the money that had gone into the accounts, the financier reported, because “Saudi intelligence officials had seized all the records relating to the card from the Saudi financial institution in question; the records then disappeared.”
Not only Posner and Risen but also a third writer, Tom Joscelyn, have probed the Zubaydah story. Joscelyn told the authors that one of his interviewees said he had seen the Zubaydah interrogation logs and that they corroborate the Zubaydah/princes scenario. Kiriakou’s interview with the authors now becomes the first on-the-record corroboration from a former CIA officer.
Absent the logs, proof positive that Zubaydah did make the claims attributed to him is unobtainable—for the worst of reasons. Though the 2002 interrogations of Zubaydah were videotaped, the Agency has admitted that it has since destroyed the tapes. While the destruction was deplorable, it may have been done to obscure evidence of brutal interrogation rather than of what Zubaydah said. The waterboarding of the prisoner occurred weeks before the CIA received formal authority to use that violent measure (Kiriakou: int. John Kiriakou, BBC News, NYT, press release, www.fbi.gov, 1/23/12; Soufan: Testimony of Ali Soufan, 5/13/09, http://judiciary.senate.gov, corr. Daniel Freedman, the Soufan Group; 2011 Posner account: Posner, Why America Slept, 202–; gruesome torture: e.g., Hollingsworth & Mitchell, 11–, 21–, 56, 62; princes died: AP, 9/2/03, “Prince Ahmed Cited in New Book on Sept. 11 Attacks,” 9/4/03, www.bloodhorse.com; Risen: Risen, 173–, 187; Joscelyn: conv. Thomas Joscelyn; destroyed tapes: WP, 12/12/07, NYT, 3/3/09).
112 not been interviewed: corr. former FBI supervisor Robert Foster, 2012
113 “wrongdoing”: LAT, 8/1/03
114 credible: int. Bob Graham
115 “assistance”: Financial Times (U.K.), 7/25/03
116 40 clamored: CNN, 7/30/03
117 “engaged … to protect … He has”: Graham with Nussbaum, xv, 231
118 “being kept”/“It was”: ibid., 215–
119 “If the 28”: New Republic, 8/3/04.
CHAPTER 34
1 Bush seeded/Cheney said: In his address to the nation of October 7, 2002, for example, Bush said: “We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.… After September 11, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.” The President mentioned 9/11 eight times at his press conference just before the invasion of Iraq. “The White House played endless semantic games on the issue,” The New York Times’s Philip Shenon has written. “When pressed, Bush was careful not to allege that Iraq had any role in the 9/11 attacks, at least no direct role. But he insisted that if Saddam Hussein had remained in power, he … would have been tempted to hand over [weapons of mass destruction] to his supposed ally Osama bin Laden. Vice President Cheney went further … suggesting repeatedly, almost obsessively, that Iraq may in fact have been involved in the September 11 plot.” The Vice President liked to cite the Czech intelligence report suggesting that hijack leader Atta had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague. See note below—evidence was developed strongly suggesting that the report was unreliable (10/7/02 address: “Address to the Nation on Iraq,” www.presidency.ucsb.edu; mentioned 9/11: Christian Science Monitor, 3/14/03; “White House played”: Shenon, 126–, 381–, & see Report, “Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Offcials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information,” U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, 110th Cong., http://intelligence.senate.gov).
2 polls: The references are to a Pew Research poll of February 2003, a Knight-Ridder poll in January that year, and a Washington Post poll in September 2003. (Editor & Publisher, 3/26/03, USA Today, 9/6/03).
3 Atta/Prague/Iraqi intelligence: An informant reported to Czech intelligence after 9/11 that photographs of Mohamed Atta resembled a man he had seen meeting with an Iraqi diplomat and suspected spy named Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in Prague at 11 A.M. on April 9, 2001. Investigation indicated that neither Atta nor Ani had been in Prague at the time alleged. Atta was recorded on closed-circuit TV footage in Florida on April 4, and his cell phone was used in the state on the 6th, 9th, 10th, and 11th. Atta and Shehhi, moreover, apparently signed a lease on an apartment on the 11th. This information, while not certain proof, strongly suggests that Atta was in the United States on April 9. CIA analysts characterized the alleged Prague sighting as being “highly unlikely.” Nevertheless, the report crept into prewar intelligence briefings as having been a “known contact” between al Qaeda and Iraq.
In addition to the alleged Atta meeting, rumors have long circulated that two other hijackers, Mihdhar and Hazmi, had contact with an Iraqi agent. This was alleged to have been Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, who acted as a greeter for Arab visitors in Kuala Lumpur at the time of the terrorist summit there in 2000. Shakir was captured in 2002. The CIA later received information that “Shakir was not affiliated with al Qaeda and had no connections with IIS [Iraqi intelligence].”
(Atta/Prague: CR, 228–, Report, “U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq,” U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, 108th Cong., 2nd Sess., Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 2004, 340–, “Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy,” Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Dept. of Defense, 2/9/07, 5–, but see Edward Jay Epstein, “Atta in Prague,” NYT, 11/22/05; Shakir: Report, “Postwar Findings About Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments,” U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 109th Cong., 2nd Sess., Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 9/8/06, 111.)
4 Mylroie propagated: e.g., National Interest, Winter 95/96, New Republic, 9/24/01, CR, 336, 559n73, Laurie Mylroie, The War Against America, NY: Regan, 2001, WSJ, 4/2/04, “The Saddam-9/11 Link Confirmed,” 5/11/04, www.fiontpagemagazine.com
5 Investigation: Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2007, 72–, and refs., Clarke, 94–, 232
6 multiple/“My view”: Washington Monthly, 12/03.
7 “We went back”: int. of Michael Scheuer for Frontline: “The Dark Side,” www.pbs.org. As described earlier in this book, bin Laden had an antipathy for Saddam Hussein and had sought Saudi government backing to use his fighters to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait (see p. 212). Though there are reports that bin Laden and Iraqi representatives did meet to discuss possible cooperation as early as 1992, there is no evidence that anything came of the encounters. Reporting in 2004, t
he Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that prior to the invasion of Iraq, the CIA had “reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship … no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al Qaeda attack” (e.g. Wright, 295–, Report, “U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq,” 346–).
8 CIA Report 2003/“no credible”/pressure/“questions”: Report, “U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq,” 314, 322, 353, 363, 449–.
9 Duelfer/senior intelligence officials: The detainee to whom Duelfer referred was Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi, who had headed the M-14 section of the Mukhabarat, the principal Iraqi intelligence agency. Duelfer noted the episode in a 2009 book and in an interview. The story was reported by Robert Windrem, senior research fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security and a longtime producer for NBC (Charles Duelfer, Hide and Seek, NY: PublicAffairs, 2009, 416, Robert Windrem, “Cheney’s Role Deepens,” 5/13/09, www.dailybeast.com).
10 “There were two”/“We were not”: McClatchy News, 4/21/09, Report, “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services,” 110th Cong., 2nd Sess. 11/20/08, 72.
11 Suskind/forgery/brief storm/denials: Following Ronald Suskind’s account of the forgery’s origins in his 2008 book, The Way of the World, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers wrote letters saying he intended to follow up. As this book went to print, however, there was no sign that he did. The Suskind book suggests that the forgery was handwritten by former Iraqi intelligence chief Tahir Habbush, who began cooperating with the CIA even before the Iraq invasion and was eventually paid off and “resettled.” The purported memo was slipped to a British reporter, billed as authentic, by an aide in the Interim Governing Council in Iraq, and published in late 2003 in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph (Ronald Suskind, The Way of the World, NY: Harper, 2008, 361–, CIA statement, 8/22/08, www.cia.gov, “Statement from Rob Richer,” http://suskinsresponse.googlepages.com, “A Note to Readers,” www.ronsuskind.com, Letters from Rep. Conyers to Rob Richer, John Maguire, A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, & John Hannah, 8/20/08, www.judiciary.house.gov).