2001: September: Page Two: This Far and No Further

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"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." -- George W. Bush, September 13, 2001 (juxtapose this with his statement of March 13, 2002: "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority.")

Dozens of members of bin Laden family, including terror suspects, are allowed to leave US secretly

September 13: 24 members of Osama bin Laden's family are allowed to fly out of the US to Saudi Arabia at the urging of, and under the supervision of, Saudi Arabian officials,
9/11 attacks
even before restrictions on commercial and private flying are lifted. Several of the family members have deep connections with terrorist activities of their own, and would have been targets of investigation by the FBI had the US government not allowed them to leave. Three of the family members leave the US on flights that the US government insists never took place, at a time when the airspace over the US was shut down to all civilian traffic. According to Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, two private planes carrying 140 members of the royal family and their entourages are allowed to leave after initially being grounded by the FBI. Some bin Laden family members leave Tampa in a Lear jet from Raytheon Airport Services and are flown to Lexington, Kentucky, where they take a 747 directly to Saudi Arabia; others fly from Texas to Washington DC, where they are flown out of the country. The Saudis are apparently provided with private planes due to the intervention of former President George H.W. Bush. Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the father of one of the young men, is a close friend of the Bush family and reportedly requested assistance in getting them out of the US; he is being sued by the families of the victims of 9/11, in part because of a documented trail of evidence showing that he personally authorized millions of dollars in funding to terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda. The Prince is being represented by James Baker's firm Baker, Botts; Baker was Secretary of State under the first Bush presidency, and represented Bush Jr. in the Florida recount lawsuits. The Lear jet made at least 5 separate flights on 9/13, from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa, from Tampa to Lexington, from Lexington back to Tampa, from Tampa to New Orleans, and from New Orleans to New York. The FAA claims that none of these flights are in their logs.
Interestingly, the entire issue of the Saudi flights out of the US is papered over in the 9/11 Commission Report, with the authors merely, and unbelievably, writing that they had found "no evidence of political intervention" in the US government to approve the flights, and that the FBI had conducted a "satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals who left the United States on charter flights." No such screening ever took place, and the political influence is well documented. (Tampa Tribune [archived copy], Greg Palast, New York Times/Want to Know, James Risen)
September 13: During a meeting at Camp David with Bush, Rumsfeld, and others, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld advocate the invasion of Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
In a May 2003 interview, Wolfowitz said they discussed with Bush the prospects of launching an attack against Iraq, for no apparent reason other than a "gut feeling" Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks." According to Wolfowitz, the subject of debate was not "whether, but when," and if Afghanistan should be invaded before Iraq. Their justification for the decision to invade is, he said, because Hussein publicly praised the terrorist attacks on 9/11. In another interview after the invasion, Rumsfeld acknowledged that US policy advocated "regime change" in Iraq since the 1990s. He said, "If you go back and look at the debate in the Congress and the debate in the United Nations, what we said was the President said that this is a dangerous regime, the policy of the United States government has been regime change since the mid to late 1990s...and that regime has now been changed. That is a very good thing." Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were two of the signers of a 1998 letter to Bill Clinton urging an invasion of Iraq, a suggestion Clinton refused to take. Bob Woodward notes in his book, Bush at War, that already Bush is impatient with discussion: "Bush was tired of rhetoric," Woodward writes. "The president wanted to kill somebody." From then on, Bush will constantly push for immediate action, saying repeatedly, "We've got to move fast" and "We've got to start showing results." (CCR, Bob Woodward/Peter Singer)

Bush begins illegal "rendition" policy of sending US terror suspects to other countries for interrogation and torture

September 13: Privately, the elder Bush dispatches Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar to console his son.
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
"He's having a bad time," the elder Bush tells Bandar. "Help him out." In a photo of their meeting, which includes Cheney, Rice, and Bandar's aide Rihab Massoud, both Bush and Bandar are brandishing cigars as they stand on the Truman Balcony of the White House.
The meeting becomes far more important than a mere hand-holding session. Bush casually tells Bandar, during discussion of several al-Qaeda suspects in Saudi custody, "If we get somebody and we can't get them to cooperate, we'll hand them over to you." The casual statement is the first step in what becomes the US rendition policy -- the shifting of terrorism suspects from country to country for interrogation. Under US law, its citizens, and even its foreign detainees, have certain rights and protections that prohibit unrestricted interrogations. But countries like Saudi Arabia have no such laws. The CIA knows, though the Saudis deny it, that the Saudis routinely torture their terrorism suspects to make them talk. Bush wants answers, and the law of the country he presides over will not get in his way. (Bob Woodward)
September 13: Ann Coulter publishes a column in The National Review that states:
Conservative hate speech and intolerance
"This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. ...We don't need long investigations of the forensic evidence to determine with scientific accuracy the person or persons who ordered this specific attack. We don't need an 'international coalition.' We don't need a study on 'terrorism.' ...We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war." Coulter's statements are used by Muslims to "prove" that America fully intends to conduct all-out war against Islamic nations in the Middle East. (National Review)
September 13: Jerry Falwell joins Pat Robertson on the 700 Club television show to air their opinions about the 9/11 attacks.
Conservative hate speech and intolerance
In the show, Robertson and Falwell manage to blame the attacks on the American Civil Liberties Union ("The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this."), the courts and the public schools ("...throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools."), pro-abortion supporters ("The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad."), and people with alternative lifestyles ("I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"). Both will apologize, to an extent, for their remarks, and shortly thereafter, Robertson will resign as head of the Christian Coalition. Walter Cronkite, the famed former news anchor for CBS, later writes, "Robertson and Falwell both shamefully blamed America's courts and the highest levels of our government for the horrific September 11 attacks on our nation. They said it happened because we 'insulted God.' Falwell went on to blame feminists, pro-choice Americans and other groups he despises." Robertson will continue on with his 700 Club, making progressively more bizarre and hateful pronouncements. (Sullivan County, Interfaith Alliance)
September 14: Bush finally visits Ground Zero in Manhattan, posing for a staged photo-op where he throws his arm around a tired firefighter and, through a bullhorn, tells the assembled firefighters and rescue workers that he is on their side.
9/11 attacks
Less than a year later, Bush will veto $150 million in emergency first-responder grants. Bush touts his administration's $3.5 billion in "new" funding for first responders, but the Congressional Quarterly exposes the claim as under-the-table double-entry bookkeeping, with changes in the accounting procedures that actually lower the amount of new monies going to cities, counties, and states to zero. Bob Beckwith, the tired firefighter in the photo op, will consider attending the 2003 State of the Union Address as a silent protest, but decides not to go. During the speech, Bush pronounces a "crusade...against a new kind of evil," sparking outrage among Muslims and moderate Christians both in the US and abroad, who do not appreciate his apparent advocacy of a Christian holy war. Bush later backs off of his characterization, but others in the evangelical community, particularly Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Billy and Franklin Graham, have continued to use the term, with all of its connotations. (Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, Kevin Phillips)
September 14: Sibel Edmonds is hired as a Middle Eastern languages translator for the FBI.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
As she later tells CBS's 60 Minutes, she almost immediately finds a pattern of deliberate failure in her translation department. Her boss says, "Let the documents pile up so we can show it and say that we need more translators and expand the department." She claims that if she wasn't slowing down enough, her supervisor would delete her work. Meanwhile, FBI agents working on the 9/11 investigation would call and ask for urgently needed translations. Senator Charles Grassley says of her charges, "she's credible and the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story." He points out that the speed of such translation might make the difference between a terrorist bombing succeeding or failing. In January 2002, FBI officials tell government auditors that translator shortages have resulted in "the accumulation of thousands of hours of audio tapes and pages" of untranslated material. Edmonds, who will be fired in January 2002 for reporting her concerns about sabotage, intimidation, corruption and incompetence to her superiors, has a whistleblower lawsuit pending against the FBI for these and other charges. She is threatened with jail if she talks to the media, a lawmaker, or even an attorney, but such threats have not stopped her from talking about her experience with the FBI. (CCR, Antiwar.com)
September 14: The neoconservative American Enterprise Institute holds a press briefing.
Iraq war and occupation
Reporters meet with AEI stalwarts Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; AEI scholar and Ahmad Chalabi champion David Wurmser; and AEI fellow Michael Ledeen. Kirkpatrick introduces AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie, who gets straight to the point: while there is only circumstantial evidence that the 9/11 attacks had been carried out by al-Qaeda, they had to have been orchestrated by Saddam Hussein; in fact, there's evidence, according to Mylroie, that Hussein is behind virtually all the world's terrorism over the last eight years. Al-Qaeda, she says, lacks the "sophistication" and "organization" to pull off such an operation; the terrorist group is more like the Keystone Kops than a serious threat. "There's evidence to suggest that Iraq was involved with bin Laden in the 1998 bombing (of two US embassies in Africa) because these bombings occurred in a certain context." Reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn write, "For Mylroie, context was evidence." She concludes that all US intelligence on terrorism should be scrubbed and re-evaluated with the focus on Iraq: "[A] review will conclude that a good bit of the terrorism we have experienced since the Gulf War is merely another phase of the Gulf War -- Saddam's part of the Gulf War." Wurmser then adds, "We really do have to begin with Iraq," and Ledeen says the Bush administration should "unleash" Chalabi's INC. "The debris from the World Trade Center had barely settled and cooled," write Isikoff and Corn, "and Mylroie and her allies were already pushing a war to overthrow Saddam."
Mylroie is a former Saddam apologist who now claims that Iraq is behind most of the Islamic-based terrorism in the world. Her theories have been widely debunked by both the FBI and the CIA, and in most circles, Mylroie is viewed as a crackpot. But she is a favorite of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, an AEI alumnus, who routinely quotes her in top-level meetings and repeatedly directs the FBI and CIA to find evidence substantiating her wild claims. Now Mylroie and her neoconservative cronies -- many of whom have landed at the AEI -- see their opportunity. They have been pushing for war with Iraq since the mid-1990s. Isikoff and Corn write, "Mylroie and her neoconservative allies would demonstrate, perhaps beyond their most fanciful dreams, that a few committed souls could change the world -- even if they didn't have their facts straight."
Mylroie had once viewed Hussein as a source of positive change in the Middle East, and hoped at one time to be the person to broker a peace deal between Iraq and Israel. Even after Hussein slaughtered tens of thousands of Kurds in 1987 and 1988, and the Reagan administration had formally condemned Iraq for using chemical weapons in the massacres in September 1988, Mylroie advised that it was unwise to "poke [Iraq] with a stick," and that a peace agreement between Iraq and Israel was still a possibility. Mylroie was astonished and dismayed by Hussein's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait; overnight she went from being a passionate Hussein supporter to an equally passionate advocate of his overthrow. In late 1990, before "Desert Storm" but during the prelude, "Desert Shield," Mylroie collaborated on a best-selling biography of Hussein with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, and, writing the book in a mere 21 days, the two portrayed Hussein as an almost apocalyptic figure of evil and brutality. An editor of the book noted Mylroie's obsession with individual, often insignificant facts (such as Hussein's reputed fondness for the Godfather movies) and her penchant for exaggerating their importance: "She was capable of great insight and of investing the smallest detail with the most disproportionate weight," the editor recalls. "She was not always capable of making a straightforward, linear argument. Left to her own devices, she would seize on reeds she would think were redwoods." Tellingly, Miller, the pipeline for a tremendous amount of Chalabi-generated propaganda that will help catapult the US into the long-awaited war with Iraq, says that Mylroie taught her a great deal about Iraq and Hussein. The book itself took a cynical approach to both Hussein and the US's decision to deploy troops to the region, portraying the US as ensuring its access to Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil. It did not advocate military action against Iraq.
Unfortunately for Mylroie's credibility, at least among political experts, just as the book was ready to come out, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak delivered a speech on October 4, 1990 that revealed the secret contacts between Iraq and Israel in 1987, and discussed the attempts by a Harvard professor to broker a peace deal between the two countries. Israeli newspapers quickly identified Mylroie as the professor in question. Mylroie quickly denied any such contacts, but five of her former associates in Israel and the US later confirm her participation. In 1990, Miller denied that Mylroie had been any sort of "secret go-between" for Israel and Iraq, but the journalist recants her story in 2006, saying that Mylroie's attempt was "never a formal arrangement, just an informal kind of thing."
Mylroie became, for a very short time, a member of a group of foreign policy specialists who briefed Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton on the Middle East. Mylroie's influence on Clinton was negligible, but the experience was enough for her to advertise herself as an "advisor" to Clinton on foreign policy.
After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see the 1993 page of this site), Mylroie quickly theorized that the bombing was orchestrated by Hussein in revenge for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Her argument was based on the fact that one of the minor figures in the bombing, Abdul Rahman Yasin, had fled to Iraq after the bombing, but the CIA quickly determined that, while Hussein allowed Yasin to remain in Baghdad, he was placed under house arrest and closely scrutinized by Iraqi security forces. However, Mylroie argued that Yasin had been granted safe haven by Hussein, and therefore that was proof enough that Hussein had orchestrated the bombing plot. She also cited phone records that showed one of the bombers, Muhammed Salameh, had called his uncle, Palestinian terrorist Abu Bakr, then living in Baghdad, 46 times in June and July 1992. No one knows what was discussed in the phone calls, and no one has ever proved any connections between Salameh and Hussein, but for Mylroie, that was additional, damning proof. "She would stare at you, and insist that unless you had studied all those phone records you couldn't understand what was going on," recalls Steven Emerson, a terrorist expert who believes the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was the work of Islamic extremists, not Iraq. "She would start rattling them off. At 4:07 AM, this person called that person, then five minutes later they called someone else. How can you challenge something like that?" One CIA analyst later said, "Not only was [Mylroie's theory] not true, we proved the opposite" -- that Hussein had nothing whatsoever to do with the 1993 bombings.
Mylroie eventually developed what Isikoff and Corn call a "Byzantine hypothesis about the 1993 bombings, one that seemed more the product of a Hollywood screenwriter than an Ivy League-trained scholar. The centerpiece of her theory is the wild speculation that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the bombing and a man with many aliases -- according to the FBI, he is actually Abdul Basit Karim, a Pakistani -- is not Basit at all, but a cold-blooded Iraqi intelligence agent trained by Hussein to kill Americans. The real Basit probably died in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and Yousef stole his identity. FBI investigators studied her theory, and the scant evidence she provided, and concluded that Mylroie was dead wrong. "I don't think there was any serious question of Yousef's identity," recalls Dieter Snell, a top investigator for the 9/11 Commission who helped prosecute Yousef in 1996 in a separate case surrounding Operation Bojinka (see previous entries for more information about Bojinka). But because Mylroie's theory is public knowledge, and the FBI's debunking of Mylroie's theory is not, many neoconservatives embraced Mylroie's work as compelling evidence of Hussein's sponsorship of anti-American terrorism. Shortly thereafter, Martin Indyk, who worked with the Clinton administration as a Middle East advisor, was paid a contentious visit by Paul Wolfowitz, then the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Indyk, who had brought Mylroie on board with the Clinton advisory team for her brief stint, had insisted that the FBI and CIA investigate Mylroie's claims -- he wanted to believe it, he later said, and was disappointed in the agencies' findings. Wolfowitz accused Indyk of deliberately refusing to see the link between Hussein and Islamic terrorism for some sort of policy reasons. Indyk isn't sure why Wolfowitz was so personally bound up with Mylroie's beliefs, but thinks it might have something to do with Wolfowitz's keen disappointment that the Americans had not overthrown Hussein in 1991, and perhaps partly because Mylroie and Wolfowitz's then-wife, Claire, were good friends. But even then, Wolfowitz was putting more faith in Mylroie than in either the CIA or FBI.
Mylroie became even more obsessive about the 1993 bombings, even volunteering to testify on behalf of Eyad Ismoil, one of the accused terrorists in the 1995 trial of Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, then accused (and later convicted) of conspiring to encourage acts of terrorism against the US. Mylroie, who never testified, would have told the court that Ismoil and Rahman were patsies of a huge, sprawling conspiracy orchestrated by Saddam Hussein. She did appear in the audience at the trial, and at one point, according to reporter Joan Ullman, wept on the shoulder of Ismoil's father. After the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Mylroie was outspoken in her belief that that, too, was an Iraqi plot. She offered to testify on behalf of accused bomber Timothy McVeigh, and sent memos promoting the Iraqi connection to McVeigh's lawyers. Defense lawyer Stephen Jones hired her as a consultant and even sent investigators to the Phillippines, where Mylroie believed that McVeigh's co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, had met with Ramzi Yousef. But, "I couldn't make it go anywhere," Jones later recalled. "She was sort of like The DaVinci Code," Jones added. "She had this one grand theory. I didn't see it."
Mylroie also accused Hussein of orchestrating the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa, definitively proven to be one of the first major assaults against the US by al-Qaeda, and of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. "Everything, everything, everything was connected to Saddam," recalls her former collaborator Daniel Pipes. "She became monomaniacal on the subject." And she became aggressively hostile to her old friends and colleagues who didn't share her tinfoil-hat conspiracies. When Pipes publicly endorsed the view that anti-US terrorism was caused primarily by radical Islamist fundamentalists, and questioned her Saddam-centric view of world terrorism, she sent him an e-mail on March 7, 1999 with the following: "My charge against you is that you are, at the periphery, responsible for the deaths of Americans. And furthermore, that more Americans will die, if people continue to listen to your version of events."
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Mylroie has become part of a powerful circle at the AEI, and with Ahmad Chalabi and his INC. In the late 1990s, Mylroie became one of Chalabi's strongest public advocates, writing op-eds for the Wall Street Journal and visiting Chalabi's American lobbyist and "campaign manager," Francis Brooke, at Brooke's Washington home. In the fall of 2000, AEI published a book about the 1993 WTC bombings by Mylroie, spinning her theories about Hussein's masterminding of the bombings. On the back cover was a laudatory blurb written by Paul Wolfowitz. Richard Perle also wrote an endorsement of the book, and former CIA director James Woolsey wrote a foreward for a later edition. In the acknowledgements, Mylroie thanks Wolfowitz and his wife Claire, who "fundamentally shaped this book," and thanks John Hannah, the AEI neoconservative who will become a member of Dick Cheney's staff. She also acknowledges the contributions and support of Brooke and his wife Sharon, Michael Ledeen, David Wurmser, John Bolton, who would soon become the State Department's top arms control officer (and later UN ambassador), and Lewis Libby, who would become Cheney's chief of staff.
In 2001, Mylroie became a member of a Pentagon advisory board on terrorism and technology, and Wolfowitz, now Deputy Secretary of Defense, constantly pushed Mylroie's theories, insisting that DIA director Thomas Wilson investigate her claims. (The DIA found nothing to support Mylroie.) In June 2001, Wolfowitz also pressed the CIA to open an investigation into Mylroie's theories. Wolfowitz becomes almost as obsessed as Mylroie with the idea of Hussein being the mastermind of an overarching conspiracy to take down America. In April 2001, in the first White House deputies meeting about terrorism, terrorism czar Richard Clarke speaks about the need to go after Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Wolfowitz insists that bin Laden is irrelevant: their focus should be on Saddam Hussein. Clarke becomes exasperated with Wolfowitz's rantings about "Iraqi terrorism," calling bin Laden "this little terrorist in Afghanistan." (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Booman Tribune)
September 15: CIA Director Tenet briefs Bush "with a briefcase stuffed with top-secret documents and plans,
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
in many respects the culmination of more than four years of work on Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda network and worldwide terrorism." In his briefing, Tenet advocates "a strategy to create 'a northern front, closing the safe haven [of Afghanistan].' His idea [is] that Afghan opposition forces, aided by the United States, would move first against the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, try to break the Taliban's grip on that city and open up the border with Uzbekistan. From there the campaign could move to other cities in the north..." Tenet also explains that CIA had begun working with a number of tribal leaders to stir up resistance in the south the previous year. In other words, the exact military strategy that eventually transpires had been prepared by the CIA over the past four years. Tenet then turns to a top secret document called the "Worldwide Attack Matrix," which describes covert operations in 80 countries that are either underway or now recommended. The actions range from routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks. By comparison, the military, which is the normal planner of military campaigns, is caught relatively unprepared and defers to the CIA plans. Kenneth Pollack, a former NSC staff member, later recalls of the briefing, "From the first moments after September 11th, there was a group of people both inside the administration and out who believed that the war on terrorism should target Iraq-- in fact, should target Iraq first. They made Saddam Hussein out to be the greatest threat to the United States and the source of all evil, if not in the world, then certainly in the Middle East. And they were pushing very early on to make Iraq the first stop in the war on terrorism." The tension in the administration centers on the conflict between two groups: one, led by Colin Powell, wants to go slow on Iraq and ensure that any retaliation be narrowly focused and has allied support; the other, spearheaded by the Pentagon's Paul Wolfowitz, has a broad agenda for domination of the Middle East beginning with the occupation of Iraq, and wants to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to begin carrying this agenda out. Wolfowitz, with the support of, among others, Cheney and Rumsfeld, will win out. (CCR, PBS)
September 15 - November 1: Two of the largest war games in history take place during the buildup for war in Afghanistan.
War in Afghanistan
Both have been planned several years in advance. Operation Swift Sword 2, the biggest deployment of British troops since the Falklands War, sends 22,000 British troops to Oman, a country 200 miles from Pakistan. It runs from September 15 to October 26. Meanwhile, 23,000 US troops take part in Operation Bright Star, from October 8 to November 1. In Egypt, they join 50,000 soldiers from Egypt, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Jordan and Kuwait for what is possibly the largest war game of all time. At the same time two US carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Given other reports suggesting the US was planning a war in Afghanistan for mid-October, it is hard to believe that all the troop movements towards Southwest Asia were mere coincidence. (CCR, From the Wilderness)

Bush promises to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive"

September 15 2001 - April 6 2002: On September 15, President Bush says of bin Laden:
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken." Two days later, he says, "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" On December 28, a few weeks after the Afghanistan war ends, Bush says, "Our objective is more than bin Laden." Bush's January 2002 State of the Union speech describes Iraq as part of an "axis of evil" and fails to mention bin Laden. On March 8, 2002, Bush still vows: "We're going to find him." But only a few days later on March 13, Bush says, "He's a person who's now been marginalized.... I just don't spend that much time on him.... I truly am not that concerned about him." Instead, Bush is "deeply concerned about Iraq." The rhetoric shift is complete when Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Myers states on April 6: "The goal has never been to get bin Laden." In October 2002, the Washington Post notes that since March 2002, Bush has avoided mentioning bin Laden's name, even when asked about him directly. Bush sometimes uses questions about bin Laden to talk about Saddam Hussein instead. In late 2001, nearly two-thirds of Americans say the war on terrorism could not be called a success without bin Laden's death or capture. That number falls to 44 percent in a March 2002 poll, and the question has since been dropped. Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies, later points out: "There appears to be a real disconnect" between the US military's conquest of Afghanistan and "the earlier rhetoric of President Bush, which had focused on getting bin Laden." (CCR, September 11 News)
September 16:
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
Bush states in a Newsweek interview, "When I take action I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." (NewsMax)
September 16: On Meet the Press, Dick Cheney makes what is perhaps the first public mention of retaliation against Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
The host, Tim Russert, says, "If we determine that Saddam Hussein is also harboring terrorists, and there's a track record there, would we have any reluctance of going after Saddam?" Cheney answers bluntly, "No." Cheney admits there is no evidence linking Hussein to terrorism or the 9/11 attacks, an answer that will change dramatically over the ensuing months. (Frank Rich [PDF file])

Secret plans to invade Iraq in the works

September 17: Bush signs a "top secret" document that outlines a plan for going to war in Afghanistan.
Iraq war and occupation
The document also directs the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq. Publicly, Bush demands that the Taliban immediately turn over bin Laden and any al-Qaeda members located in Afghanistan, and tells Powell, "We;ll attack them with missiles, bombers, and boots on the ground. ...Let's hit them hard. We want to signal this is a change from the past. We want to hit as soon as possible." According to author Bob Woodward, Powell is "slightly taken aback" that Bush wanted to issue such an ultimatum. Bush will issue the ultimatum himself on September 20.
The decision to begin planning for the invasion of Iraq takes place in secret, with no public awareness and little formal discussion among Pentagon and State Department officials; the plan emanates from the ad hoc "neocon axis" comprised, in part, of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and others in the highest levels of power. The plan conforms to the agenda written by members of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, formed as early as 1995 by Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Zalmay Khalizad, and others. Two days after Bush signs the document, the Defense Policy Board, with Rumsfeld in attendance, meets at the Pentagon and discusses the importance of ousting Saddam Hussein (a policy Richard Perle, neocon chairman of the Defense Policy Board and a PNAC consultant, had advocated in 1996 for the goal of "rebuilding Zionism"). Iraq secretly becomes a "central focus" of the US's counter-terrorism efforts over the next nine months, without much in the way of internal debate, public pronouncements or paper trail. This dovetails with the publicly released "National Security Strategy of the USA," released the same day, which is far less specific about any military incursions but still asserts that the only way to ensure US oil supplies remain steady is to impose US military dominion over the Middle East as part of the global "Pax Americana," a "watershed in US foreign policy [that] reverses the fundamental principles that have guided successive Presidents for more than 50 years: containment and deterrence," writes journalist Tim Reich. The NSS restates the Bush warning that any nation seeking to acquire power equivalent to the US risks war with America: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the United States." Foreign policy scholar Andrew Bacevich marvels at "...its fusion of breathtaking utopianism with barely disguised machtpolitik. It reads as if it were the product not of sober, ostensibly conservative Republicans but of an unlikely collaboration between Woodrow Wilson and the elder Field Marshal von Moltke." (State Department, Washington Post/World History Archives, Pat Buchanan, Peter Singer)
Of the National Security Strategy, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan writes,
Bush's foreign policies
"This is the imperial edict of a superpower out to exploit its present supremacy to make itself Lord Protector of the universe. And against whom is this threat directed? China and Russia, the only great power rivals to US supremacy. One imagines that the National Security Strategy was read closely in Moscow and Beijing." (Pat Buchanan)
September 17: The New York Stock Exchange, closed since the 9/11 attacks, reopens.
9/11 attacks
The economy slowly returns to normal. The attacks cause more than $20 billion in property damage to buildings in New York City and Washington. The work stoppage and other loss of economic output costs about another $47 billion, making the attacks the costliest man-made disaster in US history. (CCR)
September 17: GOP congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who claims to have made many secret trips into Afghanistan and even fought with the mujaheddin,
Islamist terrorism
describes to Congress a missed opportunity to capture bin Laden. He claims that "a few years ago," he was contacted by someone he knew and trusted from the 1980s Afghan war, who claimed he could pinpoint bin Laden's location. Rohrabacher passed this information to the CIA, but found the informant wasn't contacted. After some weeks, Rohrabacher used his influence to set up a meeting with agents in the CIA, NSA and FBI. Yet even then the informant wasn't contacted, until weeks later in a "disinterested" way. Rohrabacher concludes "that our intelligence services knew about the location of bin Laden several times but were not permitted to attack him... because of decisions made by people higher up." (CCR)
September 17:
9/11 attacks
CBS news anchor Dan Rather tells the audience for David Letterman's talk show, "George Bush is the president.... Wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where and he'll make the call." (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
September 17: Veteran "gonzo" journalist Hunter Thompson writes,
9/11 attacks
"The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks.... [Military censorship of news] is a given in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately-planted 'dis-information.' That is routine behavior in wartime -- for all countries and all combatants -- and it makes life difficult for people who value real news. Count on it." (ESPN/Buzzflash)
September 17 - 18: The Defense Policy Board holds a secret meeting, convened by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and chaired by Richard Perle.
Iraq war and occupation
Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, is present, though no State Department or CIA agents are invited. Instead of focusing on the first steps in carrying out a war on terrorism, the discussions center on how the administration can use September 11 to strike at Iraq. It is shortly after this that James Woolsey goes to London to collect possible evidence showing ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda; Woolsey will return empty-handed, but that does not stop Woolsey and other members of the DPB from speaking publicly about Iraq's connection to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 bombings.
CIA and Justice Department officials dismiss Woolsey's trip as a wild-goose chase. "These guys don't give up," scoffs one Justice Department official about Wolfowitz and his fellow proponents of Laurie Mylroie's wild conspiracy theories (see above). Reluctantly, the DOJ sends a veteran prosecutor along with Wolfowitz. Woolsey presses British intelligence officials to give him evidence supporting Mylroie's theory about Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 WTC bombing mastermind, is an Iraqi agent; the British officials try to prove to Woolsey that Yousef is the same person as Abdul Basit, even showing him the matching fingerprint records. Woolsey is unmoved. "He was being a real pain in the *ss," recalls Tyler Drumheller, the CIA's chief of its European Division, who has to field complaints from the CIA's London office about Woolsey.
Chalabi's INC funnels a wave of suspect Iraq defectors to US intelligence agencies, most all of whom are nothing more than charlatans, asylum seekers, and hustlers telling the US agents whatever they want to hear about Saddam Hussein's WMD programs and connections to terrorists in return for the INC's assistance in gaining the defectors asylum in Europe and America, funded by the United States. Most of the defectors are carefully prepped with their "testimony" by Chalabi and his senior INC aides; almost everything they tell the Americans is rank fabrication. In mid-2002, a CIA analysis of the information provided by the INC defectors will be characterized as almost entirely useless. Deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage is particularly incensed. "We were doing everything we could to get rid of the program," recalls one State Department official. Armitage calls a meeting to discuss the INC program, and says flatly, "The best thing that can happen is this thing gets sh*t-canned. So sh*t-can it!" If that can't be done, Armitage says, then State needs to "get this off our books and give it to somebody else." The INC program will later be transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
But the CIA and State Department's opposition to Chalabi proves irrelevant. The INC is funneling its information directly to its supporters in the Pentagon and in Dick Cheney's office. And the INC successfully plants a tremendous amount of misinformation in the American and European press, an operation not revealed to the American media until INC official Entifadh Qanbar candidly admits to the propaganda scheme, detailed in a June 26, 2002 story with the Columbia Journalism Review (see the item in the 2002 page of this site) The INC official in charge of the propaganda operation is Aras Habib, the same Chalabi aide long marked by the CIA as an Iranian intelligence agent. The CIA is highly suspicious, wondering if Iranian intelligence isn't working through the INC to influence American foreign policy, but no one in the CIA sounds the alarm -- Chalabi is too well connected. "There was no fighting City Hall on Chalabi," CIA agent John Maguire later recalls. The INC's propaganda effort is particularly successful at the New York Times, where two INC-assisted Times stories, both based on false and deliberately fabrication information, become the basis for the Bush administration's allegations about Iraq's nuclear weapons programs and its connections to Islamist terrorism. (Asia Times, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
September 17 - 18 and 28: On September 17, ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed visits Mullah Omar in Kandahar, Afghanistan,
Islamist terrorism
where he tries to convince Omar to extradite bin Laden or face an immediate US attack. Omar refuses. On September 28, Ahmed returns to Afghanistan with a group of about 10 religious leaders. He talks with Mullah Omar, who again says he will not hand over bin Laden. A senior Taliban official later claims that on these trips Mahmood in fact urges Omar not to extradite bin Laden, but instead urges him to resist the US. Another account claims Mahmood does "nothing as the visitors [pour] praise on Omar and [fails] to raise the issue" of bin Laden's extradition. Two Pakistani brigadier generals connected to the ISI also accompany Mahmood, and advise al-Qaeda to counter the coming US attack on Afghanistan by resorting to mountain guerrilla war. The advice is not followed. Other ISI officers also stay in Afghanistan to advise the Taliban. (CCR,September 11 News)
September 18:
War in Afghanistan
The Taliban calls on the Afghani people and the Arab world in general to wage "holy war" against America if Afghanistan is attacked. (September 11 News)
September 18: The BBC reveals that plans for a US military invasion of Afghanistan have been on Bush's desk for an undisclosed period of time.
War in Afghanistan
The invasion is originally scheduled for October 2001. To avoid war, the Taliban is told that they will accept King Zahir Shah as their ruler, and hand over bin Laden. Former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik, who is the source of the information, says that he doubts even if the Taliban comply with the US demands, that war would be averted. The Taliban obviously refused the offer, as to do so would destroy their control over Afghanistan and ruin their standing within the Arab world. Instead, Naik believes that the Taliban unleashed bin Laden on America as a last-ditch effort to retain power, hoping that all-out war would break out in Central Asia and other Islamic countries would rally to Afghanistan's defense. (Truthout)
September 18:
Domestic terrorism
The first anthrax letters are mailed out, two days after the anti-terrorism bill Patriot Act is first proposed. But the anthrax crisis won't begin until October 4 with the first confirmed sickness. (CCR)
September 18: The Justice Department publishes an interim regulation
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
allowing non-citizens suspected of terrorism to be detained without charge for 48 hours or "an additional reasonable period of time" in the event of an "emergency or other extraordinary circumstance." The new rule is used to hold hundreds indefinitely until the Patriot Act passes in October, providing more solid grounds to hold non-citizens without charge. (CCR)
September 18: Veteran political observer Michael O'Hanlon believes that a long, difficult war in the Middle East may ensure a military draft:
US military
"Even if one imagines a major ground war against Iraq or Afghanistan, these are the sorts of things that we've been planning to do with our active duty force for a long time. If we had a five-year occupation and needed to help shepherd in new governments before we could withdraw...then conceivably you would get into the kinds of manpower requirements that would advise in favor of a draft." (ABC/Buzzflash)
September 19:
War in Afghanistan
US combat aircraft are sent to reinforce US military bases in the Persian Gulf. Pakistani President Pervez Musharref assures his country that Pakistan is in no danger from American military strikes; thousands of Afghanis flee towards the Afghan-Pakistani border. (CCR, September 11 News)
September 19: The first draft of what will later be called the USA Patriot Act is introduced to Congress.
Attack on civil liberties
However, due to Congressional opposition of its broad powers, the act is revised and reintroduced on October 2. Usually it takes months to prepare such a long and complex piece of legislation; the fact that it was introduced a mere eight days after the bombings makes one believe that it had been prepared beforehand. (CCR)
September 19: Before the 9/11 attacks, Senate Democrats tried to cut a 57% increase in missile defense funding and to divert $1.3 billion of the administration's request towards combating terrorism, with no success.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
Democrat Joseph Biden writes, "One of the lessons we should have learned from the devastating attack of September 11 is that terrorists determined to do this nation harm can employ a wide variety of means, and that weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological, or even nuclear -- need not arrive on the tip of an intercontinental ballistic missile with a return address. That's why the Joint Chiefs of Staff argue that an ICBM launch ranks last on the 'Threat Spectrum,' while terrorists attacks constitute the greatest potential threat to our national security. The administration's obsession with missile defense -- with a price tag in excess of a quarter-trillion dollars for the layered program on the president's wish list -- is doubly troubling because of the attention and resources being diverted from critical efforts to address genuine threats." Biden's words fall on deaf ears. (Ian Williams)

Office of Homeland Security created

September 20: Bush announces the new cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security, to be led by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
Ridge later becomes secretary of a new Homeland Security Department. Accepting the post, Ridge says, "Liberty is the most precious gift we offer our citizens." The Village Voice responded, "Could Tom Ridge have said anything scarier or more telling as he accepted the post of homeland security czar? Trying to strike the bell of liberty, he sounds its death knell, depicting government not as the agent of the people's will, but as an imperious power with the authority to give us our democratic freedoms. Which means, of course, that it can also take them away." Interestingly enough, while the Bush administration used the charge that Democratic congressmen were blocking the passage of the Homeland Security bill to coerce the Democrats into voting for the bill, Democrats had been calling for the passage of a Homeland Security bill for months before September 11 without heed from the administration. Buried in the bill authorizing the new department is a provision shielding pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly from litigation related to thimerosol, an additive in many children's vaccines that contains mercury and may contribute to autism. Bush's budget director Mitch Daniels is a former Eli Lilly executive; Bush named Lilly CEO Sidney Tauzel to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. (Buzzflash, September 11 News, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)

Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi refocuses administration's intent to invade Iraq, offers 9/11 as an excuse for invasion

September 20: Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile and darling of the administration neocons, addresses a meeting of the Defense Policy Board, a group that advises Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Iraq war and occupation
Chalabi's old ally Richard Perle is the chairman of the DPB. Chalabi's aide and marketing specialist Francis Brooke recalls the meeting, which takes place with the smell of smoke from the 9/11 jetliner attack still hanging in the air, "very emotional." The group agrees with Chalabi that the US should not bother with Afghanistan, where the Taliban harbors al-Qaeda, but should instead immediately target Iraq. One participant in the meeting recalls that Chalabi made a compelling case for invading Iraq, focusing on the ease of an American victory. "He said there'd be no resistance, no guerrilla warfare from the Ba'athists, and a quick matter of establishing a government." While Chalabi has little difficulty selling the administration on moving towards an invasion of Iraq, he finds himself at odds with some officials over the rationale for such an action. Chalabi later says he and the INC would rather sell the war to the American people on philosophical grounds, as a fight against genocidal tyranny and in favor of bringing democracy to the Arab world, but that this approach is fought by the administration; administration officials want to push the concept of Iraqi WMDs. quot;Look, our focus was on Saddam's crimes, moral crimes, genocide," he says. "We were not focused on WMD. The US asked us. We didn't bring these people up; they asked us! They requested this help from us." Brooke says that no one specifically ordered the INC to focus strictly on WMDs, but "I'm a smart man. I saw what they wanted, and I adapted my strategy." In 2003, Paul Wolfowitz admits to Vanity Fair that everyone knew the WMD issue was not the strongest argument for the war, but that, for bureaucratic reasons, "we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction." As a result, the war was largely marketed domestically as a scare campaign, and the INC is enlisted to promote the danger posed by Iraq. Brooke recalls, "I sent out an all-points bulletin to our network, saying, 'Look, guys, get me a terrorist, or someone who works with terrorists. And, if you can get stuff on WMD, send it!'" (New Yorker)
September 20: After Bush issues his ultimatum demanding that the Taliban immediately turn over bin Laden and any al-Qaeda members in their country,
Islamist terrorism
many Islamic clerics urge bin Laden to voluntarily leave Afghanistan. Bush will never discuss the ultimatum, or any possible response, with anyone besides Cheney and the other administration neocons. (CCR, September 11 News, Peter Singer)
September 20:
War in Afghanistan
The Pentagon orders over 5,000 members of the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard to report for active duty. Many more reservists and National Guard members are called up over the next few days. (CCR)
September 20: Bush states: "Either you are with us, or you are against us.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." Shortly thereafter, Bush says: "As far as the Saudi Arabians go, they've been nothing but cooperative," and "[Am] I pleased with the actions of Saudi Arabia? I am." However, several experts continue to claim Saudi Arabia is being "completely unsupportive" and is giving "zero cooperation" to the 9/11 investigation. Saudi Arabia refuses to help the US trace the names and other background information on the 15 Saudi hijackers. One former US official says, "They knew that once we started asking for a few traces the list would grow.... It's better to shut it down right away." The Saudi government continues to be uncooperative to this day, and the US government continues to downplay this. (France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, Turkey, the UK, Canada, Spain, Norway, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Romania all send troops to help the US in Afghanistan, and assist in bearing the costs. Many of these countries will later refuse to be part of the Iraq invasion.) (CCR, Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose)
September 20: The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative think tank,
Iraq war and occupation
publicly publishes a letter written by William Kristol to President Bush, advising him to quickly conquer Iraq, along with the conquest of Afghanistan, Palestine, and the eradication of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. "[E]ven if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack," the letter says, "any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism." They also demand that Iran and Syria cease all support of Hezbollah, and state that if they fail to do so, the US should "retaliate" against those two countries as well. The letter also praises Israel as "America's staunchest ally against international terrorism." (Other signatories include Richard Perle, Norman Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Gary Bauer, Francis Fukuyama, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Martin Peretz, Stephen Solarz, Vin Weber, and media columnist Charles Krauthammer.) The next day, the Los Angeles Times notes that there is an internal battle inside the Bush administration about launching a war against Iraq. On one side are Secretary of State Powell and his allies, who argue that al-Qaeda needs to be defeated first. On the other side is the "string of Perles" - PNAC members Richard Perle, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and their allies, who argue that Iraq shouldn't wait. The latter side will win out, though Bush will take Powell's advice to conquer Afghanistan first. (Asia Times, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
September 20: Bush meets with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Iraq war and occupation
According to a former British ambassador to Washington, Bush tells Blair he wants to attack Iraq immediately, but Blair convinces him that Afghanistan should be attacked first. While interesting in suggesting that Bush wanted to attack Iraq before there was any evidence connecting it to al-Qaeda, this account conflicts with evidence that the US had plans before 9/11 to attack Afghanistan by mid-October 2001. (CCR)
September 20:
Iraq war and occupation
British and American aircraft conduct strikes against Iraqi missile batteries. The British deny any connection between the bombing and the 9/11 attacks. (MidEast Web)
September 20: When asked about Fox News prominently displaying the American flag on its broadcasts after the attacks and what it says about his network's objectivity,
Conservative media slant
Fox News senior vice president John Moody retorts, "I'd sure prefer that to a hammer and sickle, I'll tell you that." As far as can be ascertained, no one ever suggested to Fox that a hammer and sickle display would be a good idea. Instead, Fox will lead the way in network news "cheerleading" for the idea of American military response to the attacks, and the subsequent invasion of Iraq; one of its most memorable images for the Iraq war will be that of a fighter plane flying across the screen firing its guns, then morphing into a bald eagle. Fox will also adopt the government's own "Operation Iraqi Freedom" slogan for its coverage of the Iraq invasion. And only Fox, and the New York Post, both Rupert Murdoch-owned outlets, will adopt the government-suggested term "homicide bombers" for the more commonly used term "suicide bombers." (New York Times/Paul Waldman)
September 21:
War in Afghanistan
The Taliban decides not to turn Osama bin Laden over to the US. Instead, Afghani forces take up defensive positions along the Afghan-Pakistani border. (CCR, September 11 News)
September 21: Bush receives a Presidential Daily Briefing that informs him there is no evidence of any Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks and "scant credible evidence" of any "significant collaborative ties" between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Bush is also told that Hussein considers Islamist terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda as threats to his regime. Other officials receive the PDB, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, and Stephen Hadley. (Frank Rich [PDF file])
September 22: Taliban forces claim to shoot down an American spy plane;
War in Afghanistan
the next day, Rumsfeld will confirm that the plane has been lost. The United Arab Emirates cuts diplomatic ties with Afghanistan for not turning bin Laden over to the US; Saudi Arabia will follow suit. More American military forces are sent to the Persian Gulf. (CCR, September 11 News, Wikipedia)
September 22 - December: Witnesses begin to report US military planes secretly landing at night in the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Bush's foreign policies
The US, Tajik, and Uzbek governments initially deny that any US troops have been sent there. By October 5, witnesses say a "huge military buildup" has already occurred. On October 7, the US and Uzbekistan sign a secret agreement that reportedly is "a long-term commitment to advance security and regional stability." It is later reported that the US military bases here, "originally agreed as temporary and emergency expedients, are now permanent." The US begins building a military base in the nearby country of Kyrgyzstan in December 2001. "There are no restrictions" in the agreement on what the US can do with this base, and it will be a "transportation hub" for the whole region. The base is only 200 miles from China. The building of these bases is the culmination of efforts begun long before 9/11. (CCR)
September 23: Secretary of State Colin Powell promises "we will put before the world, the American people, a persuasive case" showing that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
9/11 attacks
"We are putting all of the information that we have together, the intelligence information, the information being generated by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies." The promised "white paper" never appears. Later the administration will justify the delay by saying most of the information is classified; a CIA agent says privately that the intelligence community does not as yet have enough information about the terrorists' operations, financing, and planning. "One day we'll know, but at the moment we don't know."
Behind closed doors, two mutually exclusive theories are forming. The FBI believes that the terrorists may not have been "a cohesive group," but rather a hodgepodge: "These guys look like a pickup basketball team," says one official involved in the discussions. The FBI is still trying to sort out identities and backgrounds for the hijackers, and the official admits that as of now, "we don't know much about them." The FBI officials argue that the hijackers' biggest ally was luck and the element of surprise. "In your wildest dreams, do you think they thought they'd be able to pull off four hijackings?" asks the official. "Just taking out one jet and getting it into the ground would have been a success. These are not supermen." The official argues that history and pilot training also contributed to the success of the hijackings; most hijackings end up with the plane landing peacefully at a Third World airport, so most pilots have been trained to go along with the hijackers' demands. The other theory, supported at the Pentagon and the CIA, credits the hijackers with years of advance planning and preparation, along with a deliberate after-the-fact disinformation campaign. "These guys were below everybody's radar," says one official. "They're professionals. There's no more than five or six in a cell. Three men will know the plan, three won't know. They've been 'sleeping' out there for years and years." Another person familiar with the investigation says, "Look, if it were as simple and straightforward as a lucky one-off oddball operation, then the seeds of confusion would not have been sown as they were." Some believe that the first clues to the hijackers' identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found: "Whatever trail was left was left deliberately -- for the FBI to chase," says a former senior intelligence official. CIA and other intelligence agencies are forced to revise their opinion of the sophistication and capabilities of bin Laden's organization. "This guy sits in a cave in Afghanistan and he's running this operation?" asks one CIA official. "It's so huge. He couldn't have done it alone." Some investigators suspect that a foreign government might have lent aid.
The CIA official adds, "To me, the scariest thing is that these guys got the first one free. They knew that the standard operating procedure in an aircraft hijacking was to play for time. And they knew for sure that after this the security on airplanes was going to go way up. So whatever they've planned for the next round they've had in place already." Some FBI officials believe that the 9/11 attacks were part of an overall plan devised by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1995 World Trade Center attack. Yousef, now in maximum custody in a Colorado "supermax" prison, has been involved in a number of terrorist plans, most visibly the infamous, abortive "Operation Bojinka" from 1995 and others, including plans to release biotoxins and the bombing of tunnels linking New York City to New Jersey. "Do they go chem/bio in one, two, or three years?" asks one general rhetorically. "We must now make a difficult transition from reliance on law enforcement to the preemptive. That part is hard. Can we recruit enough good people? ...This is about going back to deep, hard work, with tough people going down dark alleys with good instincts."
At the time of the attacks, it is likely that US intelligence agencies have not one single deep-cover operative inside any Islamic fundamentalist circles. In the summer of 2001, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former case officer with the CIA's Near East Division, quotes one CIA official as saying, "For Christ's sake, most case officers live in the suburbs of Virginia. We don't do that kind of thing." And shortly after the attacks, the CIA's claims about the effectiveness of its Counter Terrorism Center, set up in 1986 after a wave of international bombings and hijackings, were proven "wildly optimistic," according to journalist Seymour Hersh. Although the CTC was created to facilitate closer ties between various US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, most specifically the CIA and FBI, the CTC was not authorized to recruit or handle agents overseas -- that task was left to the CIA, which has its own priorities. Robert Baer, a former CIA field agent in the Middle East, recalls in his book See No Evil how poorly the CTC was functioning as far back as 1986, when it was set up by its director, Iran-Contra figure Duane "Dewey" Clarridge. "Instead of fighting terrorists, we were fighting bureaucratic inertia, an implacable enemy...." During the 1990s, Baer writes that "a fatal malaise" settled over the CIA's Paris station and, by extension, the entire organization. "We'll never know the losses we had in terms of not capitalizing on the Soviet collapse," a retired official says.
Little changed when Bill Clinton took office; though the CTC received more funding, it remained primarily a paper-shuffling entity. In 1995, after a Guatamalan paid informant murdered an American innkeeper and the Guatamalan husband of an American lawyer, the CIA's director, John Deutch, responded to the public outcry by restricting CIA access to anyone with a prior criminal record. The "scrub order" was implemented with good intentions, and provided for case-by-case review, but in practice hundreds of potentially useful CIA recruits were indiscriminately removed from the CIA's payroll, with a devastating effect on anti-terrorist operations in the Middle East. One retired officer says that the most important weapons in the war against international terrorism were being evaluated by people who "wouldn't drive to a DC restaurant at night because they were afraid of the crime problem." "It was mindless," recalls another officer. "Look, we recruited as*holes. I handled bad guys. But we don't recruit people from the Little Sisters of the Poor -- they don't know anything. ...What we've done to ourselves is criminal. There are a half-dozen good guys out there trying to keep it together." (Seymour Hersh)
September 24: Bush orders US banks to freeze assets belonging to al-Qaeda and other organizations linked to Osama bin Ladin and suspected of financing terrorist operations;
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
the US and six other countries work to freeze assets of dozens of terrorist groups. One of those organizations is the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an anti-Qaddafi Islamist organization. Recognizing that he and the US have a common enemy, Qaddafi orders his intelligence service to cooperate with its American counterpart. Bin Laden calls on Pakistan's Muslims to rise up and fight. (History of the Middle East Libya Timeline, CCR, September 11 News)

Justice Department memo says Constitutional limits on executive power in waging war are irrelevant

September 25: Justice Department lawyer John Yoo writes a 15-page memo outlining his rationale for Bush to usurp tremendous new powers to himself without going through Congress.
"Unitary executive"
Yoo's rationale, which most legal scholars believe is merely an excuse for Bush to jettison Constitutional limits on his authority as president, asserts that Bush does not need Congressional authority to attack any terrorist group or country that supports terrorism, even if they have no connection with the 9/11 attacks. Yoo argues that there are effectively "no limits" on the president's authority to wage war -- a sweeping, extralegal assertion of executive power that Constitutional scholars say goes considerably beyond any that had previously been articulated by the department and in fact goes well beyond the Constitution itself. The memo also lays the groundwork for Bush's impending invasion of Iraq. The memo is not made public until December 2004, though the memo's existence has been known since late 2001. In a footnote that explains why such broad war-making authority is needed, the memo argues that terrorist groups and their state sponsors "operate by secrecy and concealment" and it is therefore difficult to establish, by the standards of criminal law, what groups are behind particular terrorist attacks. Moreover, "it may be impossible" for Bush to disclose such evidence even if he has it without compromising classified methods and sources. The memo concludes that this should not in any way restrict the president from ordering whatever military actions "in his best judgment" he believes are necessary to protect the country. In the exercise of his power to use military force, "the president's decisions are for him alone and are unreviewable." In essence, Yoo's memo, which will be used as the foundation for the administration's arguments about the scope of presidential powers in the war on terror, says that in a time of war -- declared or undeclared -- the president can do anything he likes, without any public accountability whatsoever. A year later, the same arguments will be used by Yoo's colleague Jay Bybee to assert that the US is not bound by Congressional laws or international treaties proscribing torture during the interrogation of detainees.
The public firestorm that is detonated by Bybee's April 1, 2002 memo, in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004-05, will prompt the Justice Department to withdraw it, and prompt White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez to declare its assertions of executive power as "overly broad" and "unnecessary." Yet it seems that those moves were simply for public consumption, as the White House has continued to assert its authority to controvert the Constitution and Congressional oversight in the name of national security. This assertion of authority goes far beyond the joint congressional resolution passed on Sept. 14, 2001, authorizing the president to respond to the terror attacks. Although the White House had initially sought authority for the president to "preempt any future acts of terrorism" without any limitation on those responsible for the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, Congress deleted the pre-emption request and narrowed the scope of the president's authority to attack only those connected with September 11. "The authority granted is focused on those responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11," Democratic senator Joe Biden stated on the Senate floor in explaining what Congress intended to authorize. Yoo's memo essentially says that whatever Congress authorizes is irrelevant. "It should be noted here that the Joint Resolution is somewhat narrower than the President's constitutional authority," Yoo writes, adding that the resolution "does not reach other terrorist individuals, groups or states which cannot be determined to have links to the September 11 attacks. Nonetheless, the President's broad constitutional power to use military force to defend the nation, recognized by the Joint Resolution itself, would allow the President to whatever actions he deems appropriate to pre-empt or respond to terrorist threats from new quarters."
Unbeknownst to the public, Defense Department officials, led by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, are pushing Bush to invade Iraq and use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to do so. In fact, a memo from Defense Department undersecretary Douglas Feith written five days before the Yoo memo suggests "hitting terrorists outside the Middle East in the initial offensive, perhaps deliberately selecting a non-al Qaeda target like Iraq." The Feith memo continues, "since US attacks were expected in Afghanistan, an American attack in South America or Southeast Asia might be a surprise to the terrorists." The White House will later deny, in the face of all its other assertions, that the Yoo memo has anything to do with the rationale of attacking Iraq, but instead merely applies to possible attacks against other terrorist groups such as the Abu Sayef guerillas in the Philippines or Hezbollah in Iran. Later actions by the White House and its officials show these statements to be lies. (Newsweek)
September 26: Press Secretary Ari Fleischer warns,
Attack on civil liberties
"There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do...." Fleischer was responding to comments made by Bill Maher, the host of Politically Incorrect. Maher said the hijackers were not cowards but that it was cowardly for the US to launch cruise missiles on targets thousands of miles away. Many advertisers and affiliate stations pull their support of the show in response. ABC cancels Maher's show at the end of its season because of the controversy. Several journalists are fired around the same time for criticizing Bush. (CCR)

"We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody's civil rights to say whatever he pleases." -- Adolf Hitler

September 27:
War in Afghanistan
Rice tells Bush that the US military is not ready to begin bombing Afghanistan, nor is it ready to send troops in; Bush retorts, "That's unacceptable!" He later tells reporter Bob Woodward that he is "ready to go" with military strikes, and says, "I rely on my instincts. I just knew that at some point in time, the American people were going to say, 'Where is he [bin Laden]? What are you doing? Where's your leadership? Where is the United States? You're all-powerful, do something.'" (Bob Woodward/Peter Singer)
September 28:
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
The UN Security Council unanimously approves a US-sponsored resolution urging all countries to take action against terrorism. (CCR, September 11 News)
September 28:
Iraq war and occupation
US and British planes strike Iraqi targets in the southern no-fly zone for the second time in a week. Raids in Iraq have stepped up since August, before the September 11 bombings. A US military spokesperson says that the raids are in response to "military threats" from Iraq, but gives no details. (Reuters/New York Times/American Assembler)
September 29:
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
It is reported that Boston's Logan Airport has no video cameras in its terminals, gate areas or concourses; possibly it is the only major airport in the US to not have such cameras. The two other airports used by the hijackers to launch the 9/11 attacks had security cameras, but none of the footage has been released. It was previously reported that FBI agents had "examined footage from dozens of cameras at the three airports where the terrorists boarded the aircraft." (CCR)
September 30:
9/11 attacks
Bush ostentatiously flies to Chicago and urges Americans to "get on board" public airplanes and enjoy life "the way we want it to be enjoyed." Three days later Attorney General Ashcroft warns of "a very serious threat" of additional terrorist attacks. The confusion, uncertainty, and coginitive dissonance in the American public is extraordinary. (New York Times/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
Late September:
War in Afghanistan
US special forces begin "scouting missions" within Afghani borders. The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopts a resolution urging all member nations to put a stop to terrorism inside their borders (see above related item). (CCR)
Late September: The US officially lifts the sanctions imposed on Pakistan during the Clinton administration over Pakistan's testing of nuclear weapons.
Bush's foreign policies
The sanctions have had little effect on stopping Pakistani scientists, particularly the head of its nuclear weapons program, Dr. A.Q. Khan, from providing information and technology to radical Islamist groups. "There is an awful lot of al-Qaeda sympathy within Pakistan's nuclear program," says a US intelligence official. And an American nonproliferation expert adds, "If we're incinerated next week, it will be because of HEU [highly enriched uranium] that was given to al-Qaeda by Pakistan. In October, two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists will be questioned by Pakistani officials about their close ties to Afghanistan's Taliban. The two, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmoud and Chaudry Abdul Majid, were career officials of Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission, working on weapons-related projects. An intelligence officer expert in the affairs of that region says that Mahmoud and Majid are "the tip of a very serious iceberg" that proves sympathy for the Taliban extends far beyond officials in Pakistan's Army. It is strongly believed that many in the Pakistani nuclear program have more loyalty to Islamic fundamentalist causes than to their country.
In October, Musharraf reassures Bush that only his loyal miltary officers are in control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, but Bush officials are worried enough to begin reviewing and updating plans to secure and even appropriate Pakistan's nuclear warheads in case of a coup or uprising. Teams of CIA agents trained to "exfiltrate" nuclear weapons from countries such as Pakistan are receiving additional training from Israel's storied Sayeret Matkal, the famous Unit 262 deep-penetration outfit expert in assassinations, theft of foreign signals-intelligence materials, and the theft and destruction of foreign nuclear weaponry. Days after the 9/11 attacks, Israelis from Unit 262 arrive in the US to train American Special Forces units in undisclosed locations. The problem is a lack of reliable intelligence as to the location of Pakistan's nukes. "They've got some dummy locations," says a US intelligence official. "You only get one chance, and then you've tried and failed. The cat is out of the bag."
While Bush officials are optimistic about their chances of neutralizing Pakistan's nuclear weapons if the need arises, skepticism among US intelligence and military officials is high. The CIA had long ago lost its best informational sources in Pakistan; the agency cannot even be sure how many warheads Pakistan has, much less where they all are. "How are you going to conduct a covert commando operation in the middle of the country?" asks a former high-level State Department official. "We don't know where this stuff is, and it would take far more than a commando operation to get at it." A government expert on Pakistan's nuclear capabilities says that the US has got to get used to the idea that Pakistan, with its nuclear weaponry, may one day be run by a fundamentalist Islamic government sympathetic to fanatical groups like al-Qaeda. Another military officer says he worries most, not about a government coup in Pakistan, but a localized insurrection by ISI (Pakistani intelligence) agents loyal to extremist groups who manage to take over a nuclear storage facility. "The Pakistanis have just as much of a vested interest as we do in making sure that that stuff is looked after," says the officer, "because if they [ISI dissidents] throw one at India, they're all cooked meat." He is referring to the certainty of Indian nuclear retaliation. Intelligence officials believe that Indian commando units are also preparing to move in on Pakistan's warheads if the need arises.
India's nuclear arsenal considerly outnumbers Pakistan's, and militarily its forces more than double the Pakistanis. A big problem between the two is poor intelligence on each part as to the other's intentions. One retired CIA station chief says, "Couple that with the fact that these guys have a propensity to believe the worst of each other, and have nuclear weapons, and you end up saying, 'My God, get me the hell out of here.'" In 1990, Pakistan "panicked" over the prospect of an Indian nuclear strike and was ready to send its own nukes aloft; US diplomats managed to defuse the situation. Afterwards, US analysts decided that both countries were willing to run any risk, including nuclear exchanges, in order not to appear weak over Kashmir. Eleven years later, the situation between the two countries is little more stable, with India steadily asserting more control over the disputed region, and Pakistan responding by encouraging terrorist attacks. The situation is even more volatile considering the Indians' outrage at the Bush administration naming Pakistan as its chief ally in the Afghanistan war. Indian intelligence officials repeatedly warn the US government that Musharraf is an unreliable ally who has no intention of discontinuing his support of terrorism, and that the anger of India is mounting beyond restraint. A Pakistani diplomat retorts that India is suffering from "jilted-lover syndrome." Terror attacks against Indian bases in Kashmir will mount in number and severity over the next months, with a December 13 attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi that the Indians regard as their own 9/11. "Nitrogen and glycerine are being shaken up here," warns a former high-level US government official. "The Pakistanis are the small, scared ones. And they might use nuclear weapons as an equalizer. The danger is that the fifty-year dynamic between India and Pakistan is the backdrop for a scenario in which someone could hit a button."
Though Musharraf assures the US press that an effective command-and-control system is in place, "and there is no question of their falling into the hands of any fundamentalists," in 2000 Musharraf had described Pakistan's command-and-control system as mere geographic separation -- i.e. the warhead and the delivery systems being in different places. "That's not a command-and-control system," says an American intelligence expert. "You always keep the weapons separate." He says that Musharraf's explanation echoes Pakistan's insistence throughout the 1980s that it had no nuclear weapons because the components were never kept together. Another intelligence expert says Musharraf is not believable: "What happens in a crisis?" he asks. "Are you going to have to drive warheads to the delivery vehicles? And leave you vulnerable to an enemy strike? A real command-and-control system allows you to have them ready to go, but always under the command of the leadership." Clinton administration officials repeatedly refused to help Pakistan upgrade their command-and-control systems, believing that such assistance would violate the 1968 Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which prohibits nuclear states from giving aid or assistance to any emerging nuclear powers, a position derided by Bush administration officials. Regardless of the wisdom of the Clinton-era decision, a longtime CIA operative who worked undercover in the region says that Musharraf is merely telling Washington what it wants to hear. "Why should he tell us the truth?" he asks. "He's fighting for his life. We sit there dumbly listening to him, and it's wrong." (Seymour Hersh)
Late September - Early October: The leaders of Pakistan's two Islamic parties negotiate Osama bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the 9/11 attacks.
Islamist terrorism
The terms are that he would be held under house arrest in Peshawar and would face an international tribunal, which would decide whether to try him or hand him over to the US. The plan has both bin Laden's approval and that of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. However, the plan is vetoed by Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf, who says he "could not guarantee bin Laden's safety." But it appears the US did not want the deal: a US official later says that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort [to overthrow the Taliban] if by some lucky chance Mr. bin Laden was captured." (CCR, September 11 News)
Late September - November: Pakistan's ISI secretly assists the Taliban in its defense against a US-led attack.
Islamist terrorism
Between three and five ISI officers give military advice to the Taliban in late September, and at least five ISI operatives help the Taliban prepare defenses in Kandahar. None are later punished for this. Secret advisors begin to withdraw in early October, but some stay on into November. Large convoys of rifles, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenade launchers for Taliban fighters cross the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan on October 8 and 12, just after US bombing of Afghanistan begins and after a supposed crackdown on ISI fundamentalists. The Pakistani ISI secretly gives safe passage to these convoys, despite having promised the US in September that such assistance would immediately stop. Secret ISI convoys of weapons and nonlethal supplies continue into November. An anonymous Western diplomat later states, "We did not fully understand the significance of Pakistan's role in propping up the Taliban until their guys withdrew and things went to hell fast for the Talibs." (CCR)

This page has been broken up into two parts because of file size considerations. You can go back to the first page of September 2001 via the button link below.

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THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy

Written and Compiled by Black Max

2001: September

Page Two

Dozens of members of bin Laden family, including terror suspects, are allowed to leave US secretly

Bush begins illegal "rendition" policy of sending US terror suspects to other countries for interrogation and torture

Bush promises to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive"

Secret plans to invade Iraq in the works

Office of Homeland Security created

Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi refocuses administration's intent to invade Iraq, offers 9/11 as an excuse for invasion

Justice Department memo says Constitutional limits on executive power in waging war are irrelevant

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