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
The Events Preceding 9/11
Page Seven: 2001, August
Bush begins longest vacation in presidential history
- August 4-30: President Bush takes a nearly month-long vacation at his "ranch" in Crawford, Texas. While it is billed a "working vacation," ABC reports Bush is doing "nothing much" aside from his regular daily intelligence briefings. One such unusually long briefing at the start of his trip is a warning that bin Laden is planning to attack in the US, but Bush spends the rest of that day fishing. By the end of his trip, Bush has spent 42 percent of his presidency at vacation spots or en route. (CNN/Killtown, From the Wilderness)
Bush ignores specific warnings about impending terror attack
- August 6: Bush receives classified intelligence briefings at his Crawford, Texas ranch indicating that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. The memo read to him is titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," and the entire memo focuses on the possibility of terrorist attacks inside the US. (Press secretary Ari Fleischer will deliberately misquote the title to the press as "Bin Laden Determined to Strike US.") National Security Advisor Rice later claims the memo was "fuzzy and thin" and only 1 and a half pages long (his normal daily security briefings run two or three pages) but other accounts state it was 11 pages long. Rice also claims, falsely, that the memo focuses on al-Qaeda attacks overseas. The contents have never been made public. However, a Congressional report later describes what is likely in this memo: it mentions "that members of al-Qaeda, including some US citizens, had resided in or traveled to the US for years and that the group apparently maintained a support structure here. The report cited uncorroborated information obtained in 1998 that Osama bin Laden wanted to hijack airplanes to gain the release of US-held extremists; FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks and the number of bin Laden-related investigations underway; as well as information acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the US with explosives." It is also known that the report discussed the FBI investigation into the Phoenix-area aviation students, some of whom will be shown to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks. After such an explosive memo, Bush decides to break early and go fishing. Nothing is done in response to the memo; major airline carriers are not apprised of any possible threat, and the 9/11 commission will not be informed of any actions Bush did or did not take because, as the White House will argue, the declassification of "any description of the president's knowledge" would be a breach of national security. The contents of the memo are similarly classified. Even the existence of this memo is kept secret until May 2002.
- The 9/11 commission, in its final report, reports that Bush "did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so. He said that if his advisors had told him there was a cell in the United States, they would have moved to take care of it. That never happened. ...We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11th between the President and his advisors about the possibility of an al-Qaeda attack in the United States." The report also debunks the claim, by Bush, Rice, and others, that the PDB was nothing more than a "historical" document by writing, "Two CIA analysts involving in preparing this briefing article believed it represented an opportunity to communicate their view that the threat of a bin Laden attack in the United States remained both current and serious." And former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham later writes in his book Intelligence Matters that he can identify at least 12 separate instances where he believes the 9/11 attacks could have been foiled. (Washington Post/Killtown, From the Wilderness, Washington Post, Eric Alterman and Mark Green, Al Franken)
- August 8-15: Israeli intelligence warns the CIA that "large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent," possibly involving over 200 terrorists, many of which have already infiltrated the US or are in the process of doing so. The CIA ignores the reports. An unidentified Bush administration member says after the attacks, "If this is true then the refusal to take it seriously will mean heads will roll. It is quite credible that the CIA might not heed a Mossad warning: it has a history of being overcautious about Israeli information." However, in August the CIA does warn the administration that bin Laden is planning on launching a large-scale attack "soon." (CCR)
- August 11 or 12: US Navy Lieutenant Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on US fraud charges and claiming to be an officer in US Naval Intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities. The note can be viewed by clicking here. The note contains the ominous line, "Let one happen. Stop the rest." Vreeland claims to have come by his foreknowledge as a result of information given to him by Russian intelligence officials in December 2000; according to his story, he has tried repeatedly to transmit his information through Canadian channels since that time, without being believed. (From the Wilderness)
Zacarias Moussaoui arrested
- August 15: A Minnesota flight school reports Zacarias Moussaoui to the local FBI after he supposedly asks to learn how to fly a jet but not how to land. He's arrested by the INS, but his computer is not searched. French intelligence reports have identified Moussaoui as a known al-Qaeda terrorist who had been on their watch list for three years, but the FBI has done little to identify Moussaoui's terrorist connections. A routine FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) request filed by the FBI in early September to investigate Moussaoui will be turned down, as are most FISA requests between the inauguration of George W. Bush and the 9/11 attacks. (The Clinton administration never turned down a FISA request.) The FBI has been warned that Moussauoi, the supposed "20th hijacker" who attended Airman Flight School in Oklahoma, was only interested in steering a plane, but not taking off or landing. He also supposedly asked about New York City air space.
- According to the FBI field office in Miami, that office has never seen a July memo sent from an Arizona field office to FBI headquarters that warned of a number of Arabs seeking aviation training at a U.S. flight school. The memo urged that all flight schools be checked to identify more possible Middle Eastern students. "'That Arizona memo would have been invaluable. With all the flight schools in Florida, we would have sat on these guys,' said one federal investigator assigned to the hijacker detail after Sept. 11. 'Right after the hijackings we knew the [U.S.] government had a problem. Within hours of the attack we had names of the hijackers and that we needed to focus on flight schools,' the investigator said. 'It was clear how the information quickly flowed down that someone in Washington must have had previous knowledge. They sat on this and they blew it and it's finally coming out.'" The FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal computer, but were denied by the US Justice Department. Hours after the 9/11 attacks, the computer was seized and found to contain information directly related to the World Trade Center attacks. The arresting agent, apparently trying to set off some warning bells, writes that Moussaoui seems like "the type of person who could fly something into the World Trade Center." The Minneapolis FBI warns its Washington headquarters that a 747 loaded with fuel could well be used as a weapon. The warnings are all ignored.
- The story released to the press about Moussaoui is later proven to be largely false. Moussaoui's flight instructor at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, says that Moussaoui never asked to be taught to fly but not to land; according to instructor Clancy Provost, Moussaoui seemed to be just another friendly foreigner with a lust to fly planes. "I had a terrible time [teaching him], because he had no knowledge," Provost says. "He knew nothing. He had no spatial skills. But he was a customer, and you wanted to give him his money's worth, and so it boiled down to me just telling him stories. We had lunch and shot the breeze. There was nothing to indicate that this guy was other than a genial businessman who liked to hang out with pilots and could tell the girls that he flew a 747." Provost says flatly that Moussaoui never indicated that he wanted to fly but did not need to learn to land: "He never said that. He did say, 'I want to take off from London Heathrow Airport and land at JFK in New York.' But he wasn't skilled enough to do it, even in a simulator." Provost becomes suspicious when Moussaoui reacts oddly to a casual question about the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, and reports his misgivings to the Pan Am adminstration, who contacts the FBI. Moussaoui is arrested on August 16 by FBI and INS agents, and seems cooperative until asked about his connections to Islamic terrorists. Instead of providing him with a lawyer as he requests, the agents decide to terminate their interrogation and handle Moussaoui as a visa matter, since immigration detainees are not required to have access to lawyers. It is during the subsequent interrogation sessions that the FBI requests a FISA warrant, a request that is denied. Only after the 9/11 attacks is Moussaoui interrogated again, after being sent, along with hundreds of other Muslim detainees, to New York. (CCR, Seymour Hersh, Al Franken)
- August 16: The FAA issues a warning to airlines concerning disguised weapons. According to later testimony by National Security Advisor Rice, the FAA is concerned about reports that the terrorists have made breakthroughs in disguising weapons as cell phones, key chains and pens. However, the major airlines later deny receiving such notification. For instance, a Delta spokesperson states: "We were not aware of any warnings or notifications of any specific threats." (CCR)
Terror expert John O'Neill harassed out of FBI
- August 19: John O'Neill is investigated for an incident involving a missing briefcase. In July 2000, he misplaced a briefcase containing important classified information, but it was found a couple of hours later still unlocked and untouched. Why such a trivial issue would come up over a year later and be published in the national press seems entirely due to politics: "The leak seemed to be timed to destroy O'Neill's chance of being confirmed for [an] NSC job," and force him into retirement. A high-ranking colleague says the leak was "somebody being pretty vicious to John." O'Neill suspects the article was orchestrated by his enemy Tom Pickard, then interim director of the FBI; it is also possible that with Louis Freeh's departure from the FBI, the new leadership wanted to replace O'Neill with a Bush ally. O'Neill quits a few days later. (CCR)
- August 21: The FBI asked that two known al-Qaeda terrorists be put on a border-watch list, only to find that they were already in the country. No effort is known to have been made to locate the terrorists. (CCR)
- August 22: The French give the FBI information requested about Zacarias Moussaoui. The French say Moussaoui has ties with radical Islamic groups and recruits men to fight in Chechnya. They believe he spent time in Afghanistan. He had been on a French watch list for several years, preventing him from entering France. A French justice official later says "the government gave the FBI 'everything we had'" on Moussaoui, "enough to make you want to check this guy out every way you can. Anyone paying attention would have seen he was not only operational in the militant Islamist world but had some autonomy and authority as well." A senior French investigator later says "Even a neophyte working in some remote corner of Florida would have understood the threat based on what was sent." The French Interior Minister also emphasizes, "We did not hold back any information." But senior officials at FBI headquarters still maintain that the information "was too sketchy to justify a search warrant for his computer." (CCR)
- August 21: Thomas Donnelly, Deputy Executive Director of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, explains to the Washington Post that the US should embrace its role as imperialist hegemons over the world. He says many important politicians privately agree with him. "There's not all that many people who will talk about it openly," he says. "It's discomforting to a lot of Americans. So they use code phrases like 'America is the sole superpower.'" He also says, "I think Americans have become used to running the world and would be very reluctant to give it up, if they realized there were a serious challenge to it." These types of policies are denounced in Bush's 2000 election, and it is frequently claimed that the Bush Administration only changes its mind toward a more aggressive policy after 9/11. But in this summer of 2001, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's office "sponsored a study of ancient empires -- Macedonia, Rome, the Mongols -- to figure out how they maintained dominance." (CCR)
- August 23: John O'Neill begins his new job as head of security at the WTC. A friend says to him, "Well, that will be an easy job. They're not going to bomb that place again." O'Neill replies, "Well, actually they've always wanted to finish that job. I think they're going to try again." On September 10 he moves into his new office on the 34th floor of the North Tower. That night, he tells colleague Jerry Hauer, "We're due for something big. I don't like the way things are lining up in Afghanistan" (a probable reference to the assassination of Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Massoud the day before). O'Neill is killed the next day in the 9/11 attack. (CCR)
FBI warnings about Zacarias Moussaoui's knowledge of impending attacks are ignored
- August 23-27: In the wake of the French intelligence report on Zacarias Moussaoui, FBI agents in Minnesota are "in a frenzy" and "absolutely convinced he [is] planning to do something with a plane." One agent writes notes speculating Moussaoui might "fly something into the World Trade Center." Minnesota FBI agents become "desperate to search the computer lap top" and "conduct a more thorough search of his personal effects," especially since Moussaoui acted as if he was hiding something important in the laptop when arrested. They decide to apply for a search warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). "FISA allows the FBI to carry out wiretaps and searches that would otherwise be unconstitutional" because "the goal is to gather intelligence, not evidence." Standards to get a warrant through FISA are so low that out of 10,000 requests over more than 20 years, not a single one was turned down. When the FBI didn't have a strong enough case, it appears it simply lied to FISA. In May 2002, the FISA court complained that the FBI had lied in at least 75 warrant cases during the Clinton administration, once even by the FBI Director. However, as FBI agent Coleen Rowley later puts it, FBI headquarters "almost inexplicably, throw[s] up roadblocks" and undermines their efforts. Headquarters personnel bring up "almost ridiculous questions in their apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause." One Minneapolis agent's e-mail says FBI headquarters is "setting this up for failure." That turns out to be correct. (AP/Global Research, NewsMax)
Minnesota FBI request for search warrants for Moussaoui denied
- August 28: A RFU agent edits the Minnesota FBI's request for a FISA search warrant to search Zacarias Moussaoui's possessions. Minnesota is trying to prove that Moussaoui is connected to al-Qaeda through a rebel group in Chechnya, but the RFU agent removes information connecting the Chechnya rebels to al-Qaeda. Not surprisingly, the FBI Deputy General Counsel who receives the edited request decides on this day that there isn't enough connection to al-Qaeda to allow an application for a search warrant through FISA, so FISA is never even asked. According to a later memo written by Minneapolis FBI legal officer Colleen Rowley FBI headquarters is to blame for not getting the FISA warrant because of this rewrite of the request. She says "I feel that certain facts ... have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons." She states that FBI officials in Washington had "skewed facts" and were trying to "circle the wagons" to prevent the FBI from embarrassing disclosures. She complained that the Minneapolis office had never received the information from the "Phoenix memo" that might have led them to connect the two cases. (Although the FBI has asserted that the Minneapolis office was forwarded the "Phoenix memo" almost immediately, the Minneapolis unit chief denies ever seeing the memo.)
- Rowley also claims that Minneapolis agents were so frustrated with the lack of response from FBI headquarters that they tried to pass their information along to the CIA, and were reprimanded for the attempt. She asks, "Why would an FBI agent deliberately sabotage a case?" The superiors acted so strangely that some agents in the Minneapolis office openly joked that these higher-ups "had to be spies or moles ... working for Osama bin Laden." Failing to approve the warrant through FISA, FBI headquarters also refuses to contact the Justice Department to try and get a search warrant through ordinary means. Rowley and others are unable to search Moussaoui's computer until after the 9/11 attacks. Rowley later notes that the headquarters agents who blocked the Minnesota FBI were promoted after 9/11. Senator Charles Grassley will later accuse the FBI of "sabotaging" the memo by downplaying the importance of the information and removing key elements of the memo that should have put the FBI on high alert. (From the Wilderness, AP/Global Research)
- August 28-30: Senator Bob Graham, Representative Porter Goss, and Senator John Kyl travel to Pakistan and meet with President Musharraf. They reportedly discuss various security issues, including the possible extradition of bin Laden. They also meet with Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. Zaeef apparently tells them that the Taliban want to solve the issue of bin Laden through negotiations with the US. Pakistan says it wants to stay out of the bin Laden issue. All three are meeting with ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed in Washington at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Mahmood is known to have given $100,000 to hijacker Mohamed Atta. (CCR)
- August 29: Three men from either Pakistan or Afghanistan living in the Cayman Islands are briefly arrested in June 2001 for discussing hijacking attacks in New York City. On this day, a Cayman Islands radio station receives an unsigned letter claiming these same three men are agents of bin Laden. The anonymous author warns that they "are organizing a major terrorist act against the US via an airline or airlines." The letter is forwarded to a Cayman government official but no action is taken until after 9/11 and it isn't known when the US is informed. Many criminals and/or businesses use the Cayman Islands as a safe, no tax, no questions asked haven to keep their money. The author of the letter meets with the FBI shortly after 9/11, and claims his information was a "premonition of sorts." (From the Wilderness)
- August 30: It is reported in Russia and Pakistan that the Taliban has named bin Laden commander of the Afghanistan army. (CCR)
- August 31: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak warns the Bush administration that "something would happen" very soon. "We expected that something was going to happen and informed the Americans. We told them," Mubarak said. He did not mention a US response. (CCR)
- August 31: Turki al-Faisal, head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service for 24 years, is replaced. No explanation is given. He is replaced by Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz, his nephew and the king's brother, who has "no background in intelligence whatsoever." "The timing of Turki's removal -- August 31 -- and his Taliban connection raise the question: Did the Saudi regime know that bin Laden was planning his attack against the US? The current view among Saudi-watchers is probably not, but that the House of Saud might have heard rumors that something was planned, although they did not know what or when. (An interesting and possibly significant detail: Prince Sultan, the defense minister, had been due to visit Japan in early September, but canceled his trip for no apparent reason less than two days before his planned departure.)" Turki is later sued for his role in 9/11 and appointed the Saudi ambassador to Britain. (From the Wilderness)
- Late August: John O'Neill, Deputy Director of the FBI and the agency's prime expert on bin Laden, quits the FBI (see above). He is quoted as saying, "The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it." Reportedly O'Neill was convinced that the Bush administration had stonewalled FBI investigations into the Taliban/al-Qaeda connections because of the White House's desire to establish an oil pipeline across Afghanistan. O'Neill died in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. (CCR)
