THE COMPLETE 9/11 TIMELINE, PART 1
By Paul Thompson
Other Sections of the
Timeline:
This
story is so complicated and long, I've tried to break it into threads of different
colors to make it easier to digest. I've made separate pages for each thread,
in addition to webpages with all the threads together.
Central Asian oil, Enron and the Afghanistan pipelines. For a
separate page of these entries only, click here.
Information that should have shown what kind of attack
al-Qaeda would make. For a separate page of these entries only, click here.
US preparing for a war with Afghanistan before 9/11,
increasing control of Asia before and since. For a separate page of these entries
only, click
here.
Incompetence, bad luck, and/or obstruction of justice. For a
separate page of these entries only, click here.
Suggestions of advanced knowledge that an attack would take
place on or around 9/11. For a separate page of these entries only, click here.
Cover-up, lies, and/or contradictions. For a
separate page of these entries only, click here.
Israeli "art student" spy ring, Israeli
foreknowledge evidence. For a separate page of these entries only, click here.
Anthrax attacks and microbiologist deaths. For a
separate page of these entries only, click here.
Pakistani ISI and/or opium drug connections. For a separate page of these entries only, click here.
Bin Laden family, Saudi Arabia corruption and support of
terrorists, connections to Bush. For a separate page of these entries
only, click
here.
Erosion of civil liberties and erection of a police
state. For a separate page of these entries only, click here.
Names/Abbreviations
For
simplicity's sake I don't always use the full names and jobs of some of the
major people or organizations in this story. For instance, every time I say
"bin Laden," I mean the terrorist Osama bin Laden, not one of his
family members. I have standardized the spellings of the Islamic names, even
within quotes. Al-Qaeda, for instance, can be spelled many ways, and the person
known as Saeed Sheikh has too many name variations and spelling variations to
count.
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Organizations: |
Important
individuals: |
The hijackers:
There are many spellings and aliases - the names and spellings below
are the versions preferred by the FBI. *= Some evidence suggests the identity
of this person may be incorrect (see September
16-23, 2001).
American Airlines Flight 11
Waleed
Alshehri, 22, from Saudi Arabia *
Wail
Alshehri, 28, from Saudi Arabia, brother of Waleed Alshehri, had
psychological problems *
Abdulaziz
Alomari, 22, from Saudi Arabia *
Satam Al
Suqami, 25, from Saudi Arabia
Mohamed
Atta, 33, from Egypt (the likely pilot) *
United Airlines Flight 93
Saeed
Alghamdi, 21, from Saudi Arabia (had flight training) *
Ahmed
Alhaznawi, 20, from Saudi Arabia *
Ahmed
Alnami, 23, from Saudi Arabia *
Ziad Jarrah,
26, from Lebanon (the likely pilot) *
United Airlines Flight 175
Ahmed
Alghamdi, 22, from Saudi Arabia
Hamza
Alghamdi, 20, from Saudi Arabia, brother of Ahmed Alghamdi *
Marwan
Alshehhi, 23, from United Arab Emirates (the likely pilot) *
Mohand
Alshehri, 22, from Saudi Arabia, possible cousin of Marwan Alshehhi and/or
from the same extended family as Wail and Waleed Alshehri
Fayez
Ahmed Banihammad (Alshehri), 24, from United Arab Emirates (had flight
training)
American Airlines Flight 77
Khalid
Almihdhar, 26, from Saudi Arabia (originally from Yemen, changed
citizenship in 1996) *
Nawaf
Alhazmi, 25, from Saudi Arabia
Salem
Alhazmi, 20, from Saudi Arabia, brother of Nawaf Alhazmi *
Hani
Hanjour, 29, from Saudi Arabia (the likely pilot)
Majed Moqed,
24, from Saudi Arabia *
December
26, 1979: Soviet forces invade Afghanistan. They will
withdraw in 1989 after a brutal 10-year war. It has been commonly believed that
the invasion was unprovoked. But in a 1998 interview, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Adviser, reveals that the CIA
began destabilizing the pro-Soviet Afghan government six months earlier, in a
deliberate attempt to get the Soviets to invade and have their own Vietnam-type
costly war: "What is most important to the history of the world? The
Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the
liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" [Le
Nouvel Observateur, 1/98, Mirror,
1/29/02] The US and Saudi Arabia give a huge amount of
money (estimates range up to $40 billion total for the war) to support the
mujaheddin guerrilla fighters opposing the Russians. Most of the money is managed by the ISI, Pakistan's
intelligence agency. [Nation,
2/15/99]
Early 1980:
Osama bin Laden begins providing financial, organizational, and engineering aid
for the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, with the advice and
support of the Saudi royal family. [New Yorker,
11/5/01] Some believe he was hand-picked for
the job by Prince Turki al-Faisal, head of Saudi Arabia's secret service. [Sunday Times,
8/25/02] Bin Laden has been considered a Turki protégé by some biographers.
[New
Yorker, 11/5/01] The Pakistani ISI
wanted a Saudi prince as a public demonstration of the commitment of the Saudi
royal family and as a way to ensure royal funds for the anti-Soviet forces. The
agency failed to get royalty, but bin Laden, with his family's influential
ties, was good enough for the ISI. [Miami
Herald, 9/24/01]
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October
1980: Salem bin Laden, Osama's oldest brother, is later
described by a French secret intelligence report as one of the two closest
friends of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. As such, he often performs important
missions for Saudi Arabia. The French report speculates that he is involved in
secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries this month. Frontline,
which published the French report, notes that such meetings have never been
confirmed. Rumors of these meetings have been called the "October
Surprise" and some have speculated Bush Sr. negotiated in these meetings a
delay to the release of the US hostages in Iran, thus helping Ronald Reagan and
Bush win the 1980 Presidential election. All of this is highly speculative, but
if the French report is correct, it points to a long-standing connection of
highly illegal behavior between the Bush and bin Laden families (see also Mid-1980s and 1988).
[PBS
Frontline, 2001]
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1982-1991: Afghan opium production skyrockets from 250 tons in 1982 to
2,000 tons in 1991, coinciding with CIA support and funding of the mujaheddin.
Alfred McCoy, a professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of
Wisconsin, says US and Pakistani intelligence officials sanctioned the rebels'
drug trafficking because of their fierce opposition to the Soviets: "If
their local allies were involved in narcotics trafficking, it didn't trouble
CIA. They were willing to keep working with people who were heavily involved in
narcotics." For instance, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a rebel leader who received
about half of all the CIA's covert weapons, was known to be a major heroin
trafficker. The director of the CIA in
Afghanistan claims later to be oblivious about the drug trade: "We found
out about it later on." [Minneapolis
Star-Tribune, 9/30/01, Atlantic
Monthly, 5/96]
1984: Bin Laden moves to Peshawar, a Pakistani town bordering
Afghanistan, and is running a front organization for the mujaheddin known as
Maktab al-Khidamar (MAK), funneling money, arms and fighters from the outside
world into the Afghan war. [New Yorker,
1/24/00] "MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the
Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for
conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation." [MSNBC, 8/24/98] He
becomes closely tied to the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and greatly
strengthens Hekmatyar's opium smuggling operations. [Le Monde,
9/14/01] Hekmatyar had ties with bin Laden, the CIA and drug running, and
has also been called "an ISI stooge and creation" by the Wall Street
Journal. [Asia Times,
11/15/01]
1984-1994: The US, through USAID and the University of Nebraska, spends
millions of dollars developing and printing textbooks for Afghan
schoolchildren. The textbooks are filled with violent images and militant
Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet
occupation. For instance, children are taught to count with illustrations
showing tanks, missiles and land mines. Lacking any alternative, millions of
these textbooks are used long after 1994; the Taliban are still using them in
2001. In 2002, the US started producing less violent versions of the same
books, which Bush says will have "respect for human dignity, instead of
indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry." Bush fails to
mention who created those earlier books. [Washington
Post, 3/23/02, CBC,
5/6/02] Since the war with Russia ended
in 1989, why did the US keep promoting Islamic radicalism another five years?
Mid-1980s:
Salem bin Laden, Osama's oldest brother, is allegedly
involved in the Iran-Contra affair. Quoting a French intelligence report posted
by Frontline (see October
1980), The New Yorker reports, "During the nineteen-eighties,
when the Reagan Administration secretly arranged for an estimated thirty-four
million dollars to be funneled through Saudi Arabia to the Contras, in
Nicaragua, Salem bin Laden aided in this cause, according to French
intelligence." [New Yorker,
11/5/01, Frontline,
2001]
Mid-1980s (B): The ISI starts a special cell of agents who use profits from
heroin production for covert actions "at the insistence of the CIA."
"This cell promotes the cultivation of opium and the extraction of heroin
in Pakistani territory as well as in the Afghan territory under mujaheddin
control for being smuggled into the Soviet controlled areas, in order to turn
the Soviet troops heroin addicts. After the withdrawal of the Soviet troops,
the ISI's heroin cell started using its network of refineries and smugglers for
smuggling heroin to the Western countries and using the money as a supplement
to its legitimate economy. But for these heroin dollars, Pakistan's legitimate
economy must have collapsed many years ago." [Financial
Times, Asian edition, 8/10/01] The ISI grows so powerful on this money,
that Time magazine later states, "Even by the shadowy standards of spy
agencies, the ISI is notorious. It is commonly branded 'a state within the
state,' or Pakistan's 'invisible government.'" [Time,
5/6/02]
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March
1985: The US decides to escalate the war in Afghanistan. The
CIA, British MI6 and the ISI agree to launch guerrilla attacks from Afghanistan
into then Soviet-controlled Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, attacking military
installations, factories and storage depots within Soviet territory until the
end of the war. The CIA also begins supporting the ISI in recruiting radical
Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan
mujaheddin. The CIA gives subversive literature and Korans to the ISI, who
carry them into the Soviet Union. Eventually, around
35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries will fight with the Afghan
mujaheddin. Tens of thousands more will study in the hundreds of new madrassas
funded by the ISI and CIA in Pakistan. Their main logistical base is in the
Pakistani city of Peshawar. [Washington Post,
7/19/92, Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, 9/23/01, Honolulu
Star-Bulletin, 9/23/01, The
Hindu, 9/27/01, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in
Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid, 3/01] In the late 1980s, Pakistan's President
Benazir Bhutto, feeling the mujaheddin network has grown too strong, tells
President George Bush Sr., "You are creating a Frankenstein." But the
warning goes unheeded. [Newsweek,
9/24/01] By 1993, the President
of Pakistan tells Egyptian President Hasni Mubarak that Peshawar is under de
facto control of the mujaheddin, and unsuccessfully asks for military help in
reasserting Pakistani control over the city. Thousands of mujaheddin fighters
return to their home countries after the war is over, and engage in countless
acts of terrorism. One Western diplomat notes these thousands would never have
been trained or united without US help, and says "The consequences for all
of us are astronomical." [Atlantic
Monthly, 5/96]
1986: The CIA, ISI and bin Laden work together to build the Khost
tunnel complex in Afghanistan. This will be a major target of bombing and
fighting in the US defeat of the Taliban in 2001. [Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, 9/23/01, Honolulu
Star-Bulletin, 9/23/01, The
Hindu, 9/27/01, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in
Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid, 3/01] It is reported before 9/11 that "bin
Laden worked closely with Saudi, Pakistani and US intelligence services to
recruit mujaheddin from many Muslim countries," but this hasn't been
reported much since. [UPI,
6/14/01] A CIA spokesman will later claim,
"For the record, you should know that the CIA never employed, paid, or
maintained any relationship whatsoever with bin Laden." [Ananova,
10/31/01]
September
1987-March 1989: Michael Springmann, the head US
consular official in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, later claims that he is
"repeatedly told to issue visas to unqualified applicants." He turns
them down, but is repeatedly overruled by superiors. Springmann loudly
complains about the practice to numerous government offices, but no action is
taken. He eventually is fired and the files he has kept on these applicants are
destroyed. Springmann speculates that the issuing of visas to radical Islamic
fighters continued until 9/11. He says he later learns that recruits from many
countries fighting for bin Laden against Russia in Afghanistan were funneled
through the Jeddah office to get visas to come to the US. They would then train for the Afghan war in the US. He says the
Jeddah consulate was run by the CIA and staffed almost entirely by intelligence
agents. Springmann suggests that this visa system may have continued until
present day, and that the 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers getting their visas
through Jeddah (see May
21, 2002 (C)) could have been a part of it (see
also October 21, 2002 and October 23, 2002). [BBC,
11/6/01, AP,
7/17/02, Fox News,
7/18/02]
1988: Prior to this year, George Bush Jr. is a failed oil man.
Three times friends and investors have bailed him out to keep him from going
bankrupt. But in this year, the same year his father becomes President, some
Saudis buy a portion of his small company, Harken, which has never worked
outside of Texas. Later in the year, Harken wins a contract in the Persian
Gulf and starts doing well financially. These transactions seem so
suspicious that the Wall Street Journal in 1991 states it "raises the
question of ... an effort to cozy up to a presidential son." Two
major investors in Bush's company during this time are Salem bin Laden, Osama
bin Laden's oldest brother, and Khaled bin Mahfouz. [Salon,
11/19/01, Intelligence
Newsletter, 3/2/00] Khaled bin Mahfouz is a Saudi banker with a 20 percent
stake in BCCI, a bank that will go bankrupt a few years later in the biggest
corruption scandal in banking history (see July
5, 1991). In 1999 bin Mahfouz will be placed under house arrest
in Saudi Arabia for contributions he gave to welfare organizations closely
linked to bin Laden (see April 1999). Bin Mahfouz's sister
is married to Osama bin Laden (see also August
13, 1996, Early December 2001 (B), December
4, 2001 (B), and November 26, 2002). [Washington
Post, 2/17/02] In late 2002, Ron Motley, the lead lawyer in a 9/11 Saudi
suit (see August 15, 2002), threatens that
Bush, now President, "may find himself being deposed" in court for
these financial ties to bin Mahfouz. [Minneapolis Star
Tribune, 8/16/02]
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August 11, 1988: Bin Laden
forms al-Qaeda this year (notes are later found showing a meeting led by bin
Laden on this day discussing "the establishment of a new military
group"). [AP,
2/19/03]
August 12, 1988: The first media report appears about
Echelon, a high-tech global electronic surveillance network between the US,
Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Governments deny that Echelon
exists, but whistleblowers expose it. They claim it's being abused in many
ways, including to spy on politicians domestically. Echelon is capable of
"near total interception of international commercial and satellite
communications," including taps into transoceanic cables, but it is
"impossible for analysts to listen to all but a small fraction of the
billions of telephone calls, and other signals which might contain
'significant' information." [New
Statesman, 8/12/88] Understanding the information surveillance
capabilities of Echelon is vital to determining what should have been known
about 9/11.
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1989-May 2000: Nabil
al-Marabh moves to Boston in 1989 and apparently lives there as a taxi driver
and al-Qaeda sleeper agent for the next ten years. [New York Times,
9/18/01, Boston
Herald, 9/19/01] In 1992 he learns to use weapons in an Afghan al-Qaeda
training camp with a terrorist named Raed Hijazi. [Chicago
Sun-Times, 9/5/02] He and Hijazi live together and drive taxis at the same
company in Boston for several years. [Los Angeles
Times, 9/21/01] A mutual friend at the same taxi company is later killed
participating in a 1999 al-Qaeda terrorist attack. [Boston
Herald, 9/19/01] Hijazi helps plan the USS Cole bombing (see October
12, 2000), and then participates in a failed attempt to bomb a hotel
in Jordan (see November 30, 1999). In May 1999,
the FBI approaches al-Marabh looking for Hijazi, but al-Marabh lies and says he
doesn't know Hijazi. [Washington
Post, 9/4/02] Hijazi is arrested in Syria in October 2000 and imprisoned in
Jordan for his bomb attempt there. [Toronto
Sun, 10/16/01] He begins to cooperate with investigators and identifies
al-Marabh as a US al-Qaeda operative. [New York Times,
9/18/01] Terrorist Ahmed Ressam (see December
14, 1999) gives evidence helping to prove that al-Marabh sent money
to Hijazi for the Jordan bombing. [Toronto
Sun, 11/16/01, ABC 7,
1/31/02] By February 1999, al-Marabh is driving taxis in Tampa, Florida
while maintaining a cover of living in Boston. [Toronto
Star, 10/26/01, ABC 7,
1/31/02] [New
York Times, 9/18/01] He apparently lives in Tampa at least part time until
February 200; investigators later wonder if he is an advance man for the
Florida-based hijackers. [New York Times, 9/18/01,
ABC 7,
1/31/02] Al-Marabh is living in Detroit by May 2000, though he maintains a
Boston address until September 2000 (see May
30, 2000-September 11, 2001).
[Boston
Herald, 9/19/01] These connections with Hijazi lead to a US Customs
investigation into al-Marabh in early 2001 that connects him with two of the
9/11 hijackers (see Spring
2001 (B)). Yet, despite all of these al-Qaeda
connections and more, the US later decides there is no evidence that al-Marabh
is a terrorist (see September
19, 2001-September 3, 2002).
January 20, 1989: George
Bush Sr. is inaugurated as US president, replacing Ronald Reagan. He remains
president until 1993 (see January 20, 1993). Many of the key
members in his government later have important positions again when his son
George Bush Jr. becomes president in 2001 (see January 21, 2001). For instance,
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell later becomes Secretary of State,
and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney later becomes Vice President.
February 15, 1989: Soviet
forces withdraw from Afghanistan. Afghan Communists retain control of Kabul,
the capital, until April 1992. [Washington
Post, 7/19/92]
November
9, 1989: The Berlin Wall begins to fall in East Germany,
signifying the end of the Soviet Union as a superpower. Just six days later, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin
Powell presents a new strategy document to President Bush Sr., proposing that
the US shift from countering Soviet attempts at world dominance to ensuring US
world dominance. Bush Sr. accepts this plan in a public speech, with slight
modifications, on August 2, 1990, the same day Iraq begins invading Kuwait. In
early 1992, Powell, counter to his usual public dove persona, tells congresspeople
that the US requires "sufficient power" to "deter any challenger
from ever dreaming of challenging us on the world stage." He says, "I
want to be the bully on the block." Powell's early ideas of global
hegemony will be formalized by others in a 1992 policy document (see March 8, 1992) and finally
realized as policy when Bush Jr. becomes president in 2001. [Harper's,
10/02]
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1990: Hani
Hanjour enters the US, the first of the hijackers to do so. He takes an English
course in Tuscon, Arizona. [Time,
9/24/01, Cox News,
10/15/01, New
York Times, 6/19/02] However, the FBI claims Hanjour first
arrived on October 3, 1991. [Congressional
Intelligence Committee, 9/26/02]
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July
1990: Despite being on a terrorist watch list, radical Muslim
leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman enters the US on a "much-disputed"
tourist visa issued by an undercover CIA agent. [Village
Voice, 3/30/93, Atlantic
Monthly, 5/96] Abdul-Rahman was heavily involved with the CIA and ISI
efforts to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, and became famous traveling all
over the world for five years recruiting new mujaheddin. But he never hid his
prime goals, which were to overthrow the governments of the US and Egypt. [Atlantic
Monthly, 5/96] He is "infamous throughout the Arab world for his
alleged role in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat."
Abdul-Rahman immediately begins setting up a terrorist network in the US. [Village
Voice, 3/30/93] He is known to have befriended bin Laden while in
Afghanistan, and bin Laden secretly pays Abdul-Rahman's US living expenses. [Atlantic
Monthly, 5/96, ABC
News, 8/16/02] Abdul-Rahman's ties to the assassination of Rabbi Meir
Kahane in later 1990 is ignored (see November
5, 1990). As one FBI agent says in 1993, he is "hands-off....
It was no accident that the sheikh got a visa and that he's still in the
country. He's here under the banner of national security, the State Department,
the NSA, and the CIA." A very high-ranking Egyptian official says
Abdul-Rahman continues to assist the CIA in recruiting new mujaheddin after
moving to the US. This official says, "We begged America not to coddle the
sheikh." Egyptian intelligence warns the US that Abdul-Rahman is planning
new terrorist attacks, and on November 12, 1992, terrorists connected to him
machine-gun a busload of Western tourists in Egypt. But still he lives freely
in New York City. [Village
Voice, 3/30/93] He is finally arrested in 1993 and convicted for assisting
in the 1993 WTC bombing (see February 26, 1993). [Atlantic
Monthly, 5/96]
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November 5,
1990: An Egyptian American named El Sayyid Nosair assassinates
controversial right-wing Zionist leader Rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane's
organization, the Jewish Defense League, was linked to dozens of bombings and
was ranked by the FBI as the most lethal domestic terrorist group in the US at
the time. Nosair is captured after a police shoot-out. An FBI informant says he saw Nosair meeting with Muslim leader
Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman a few days before the attack (see July 1990), and possessions
indicating a wider plot with additional targets are found. [Village
Voice, 3/30/93] Incredibly, files found in his possession which give
details of a terrorist cell, mention al-Qaeda, and discuss the destruction of
tall US buildings, are not translated until years later. [ABC
News, 8/16/02] Instead, within 12 hours of the assassination, New York
police declare the assassination was the work of a "lone gunman" and
they stick with that story. In his trial, prosecutors choose not to introduce
his incriminating possessions as evidence, nor is his confession even
mentioned, and an apparent "open-and-shut case" ends with his
acquittal. However, he is sentenced to 22 years on other lesser charges. [Village
Voice, 3/30/93] Bin Laden contributes to Nosair's defense fund. Many of
those involved in Kahane's assassination later plan the 1993 WTC bombing (see February 26, 1993). As one FBI
agent puts it, "The fact is that in 1990, myself and my detectives, we had
in our office in handcuffs, the people who blew up the World Trade Center in
'93.… We were told to release them." [ABC
News, 8/16/02]
1991: Future National Security Advisor Rice joins Chevron's
board of directors, and works with Chevron until being picked as Bush's
National Security Advisor in 2001. Chevron even names an oil tanker after her.
Rice is hired for her expertise in Central Asia, and much of her job is spent
arranging oil deals in the Central Asian region. Chevron also has massive
investments there, which grow through the 1990s. [Salon,
11/19/01]
1991 (B): Bin Laden, having returned from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia and
the family business in 1989, moves to Sudan. With a personal fortune of around
$250 million (estimates range from $50 to $800 million [Miami
Herald, 9/24/01]), he begins plotting terrorist attacks against the US. [New Yorker,
1/24/00]
1991-1995: According to a Dutch government report, the US military
secretly breaks a United Nations arms embargo during the 1991-1995 Yugoslavia
war by channeling arms through radical Muslim groups in an
"Iran-Contra-style operation." US, Turkish and Iranian intelligence
groups work with radical Muslims in what the Dutch report calls the
"Croatian pipeline." Arms bought by Iran and Turkey and financed by
Saudi Arabia are flown into Croatia. Mujaheddin fighters are also flown in. The
US is "very closely involved" in the flagrant breach of the embargo,
an embargo the US is in charge of monitoring. [Guardian,
4/22/02] Could bin Laden have had a secret deal with the US to jointly
support the Bosnian Muslims, and in return the US didn't try to catch bin
Laden? If so, did it last after 1995?
1991-1997: The Soviet Union collapses in 1991, creating many new
nations in Central Asia. Major US oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Texaco,
Unocal, BP Amoco, Shell and Enron, directly invest billions in these Central
Asian nations, bribing heads of state to secure equity rights in the huge oil
reserves in these regions. The oil companies commit to future direct
investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. These companies face the problem
however of having to pay exorbitant prices to Russia to use Russian pipelines
to get the oil out. These oil fields have an estimated $6 trillion
potential value. US companies own approximately 75% of the rights. [New Yorker, 7/9/01, Asia Times, 1/26/02]
FTW
March 1991: Did
bin Laden ever truly break with the US and the CIA? The strongest motive that
he did comes from this time, which is also roughly when al-Qaeda first starts
targeting US interests. Although the Gulf War against Iraq just ended, the
US does not withdraw all of its soldiers from Saudi Arabia, but stations some
15,000-20,000 there permanently. [Nation,
2/15/99] In 1991, President Bush Sr. falsely
claims that all US troops have withdrawn. [Guardian,
12/21/01] Their presence isn't admitted until 1995, and there has never
been an official explanation as to why they are there. The
Nation postulates that they are there to prevent a coup. Saudi Arabia has an
incredible array of high-tech weaponry, but may lack the expertise to use it
and local soldiers may have conflicting loyalties. In 1998, bin Laden will
release a statement: "For more than seven years the United States has been
occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsula,
plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people,
terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the peninsula into a
spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." [Nation,
2/15/99]
July 5, 1991: The Bank
of England shuts down the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the
largest Muslim bank in the world. Based in Pakistan, this bank financed
numerous Muslim terrorist organizations and laundered money generated by
illicit drug trafficking and other illegal activities, including arms
trafficking. Bin Laden and many other terrorists had accounts there. [Detroit
News, 9/30/01] One money-laundering expert claims, "BCCI did dirty
work for every major terrorist service in the world." [Los
Angeles Times, 1/20/02] American and British governments knew about all
this yet kept the bank open for years. The ISI had major
connections to the bank. But, as later State Department reports indicate,
Pakistan remains a major drug trafficking and money-laundering center despite
the bank's closing. [Detroit
News, 9/30/01] The Washington Post claims, "The CIA used BCCI
to funnel millions of dollars to the fighters battling the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan." A French intelligence report later suggests the BCCI network
has been largely rebuilt by bin Laden (see October 2001). [Washington
Post, 2/17/02] The ruling family of Abu Dhabi, the dominant emirate in the
United Arab Emirates, owned 77 percent of the bank. [Los
Angeles Times, 1/20/02] A network of drug, weapons and money
laundering later develops between al-Qaeda, the Taliban, United Arab Emirates
and Pakistan (see Mid-1996-October 2001). Is the
ISI still connected to this ex-BCCI network? Is the CIA?
March
8, 1992: The Defense Planning Guidance,
"a blueprint for the department's spending priorities in the aftermath of
the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union," is leaked to the
New York Times. [New York Times,
3/8/92, Newsday,
3/16/03] The paper causes controversy, because it hadn't yet been
"scrubbed" to replace candid language with euphemisms. [New York Times,
3/10/92, New
York Times, 3/11/92, Observer, 4/7/02]
The document argues that the US dominates the world as sole superpower, and to
maintain that role it "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring
potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global
role." [New
York Times, 3/8/92, New York
Times, 3/8/92 (B)] As the Observer summarizes it, "America's friends
are potential enemies. They must be in a state of dependence and seek solutions
to their problems in Washington." [Observer, 4/7/02]
The document is mainly written by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, who hold
relatively low posts at the time, but under Bush Jr. become Deputy Defense
Secretary and Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, respectively. [Newsday,
3/16/03] The document conspicuously avoids mention of collective security
arrangements through the United Nations, instead suggesting the US "should
expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the
crisis being confronted." [New York Times,
3/8/92] It also calls for "punishing" or "threatening punishment"
against regional aggressors before they act. Interests to be defended
pre-emptively include "access to vital raw materials,
primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to US citizens from
terrorism." [Harper's,
10/02] Senator Lincoln Chafee (R), later says, "It is my opinion that
[Bush Jr.'s] plan for preemptive strikes was formed back at the end of the
first Bush administration with that 1992 report." [Newsday,
3/16/03] In response to the controversy, in May 1992 the US releases an
updated version of the document that stresses the US will work with the United
Nations and its allies (see also January 1993). [Washington
Post, 5/24/92, Harper's,
10/02]
June 4, 1992: It is reported that the FBI is investigating the connections
between James Bath and George Bush Jr. Bath is Salem bin Laden's official
representative in the US. "Documents indicate that the Saudis were using
Bath and their huge financial resources to influence US policy," since
Bush Jr.'s father is president. Bush denies any connections to Saudi money. What
became of this investigation is unclear. [Houston
Chronicle, 6/4/92]
September
1, 1992: Terrorists Ahmad Ajaj and Ramzi
Yousef enter the US together. Ajaj is arrested at Kennedy Airport in New York
City. Ramzi Yousef is not arrested, and later masterminds the 1993 bombing of
the WTC (see February 26, 1993). "The US
government was pretty sure Ahmad Ajaj was a terrorist from the moment he
stepped foot on US soil," because his "suitcases were stuffed with
fake passports, fake IDs and a cheat sheet on how to lie to US immigration
inspectors," plus "two handwritten notebooks filled with bomb
recipes, six bomb-making manuals, four how-to videotapes concerning weaponry
and an advanced guide to surveillance training." However, Ajaj is only
charged with passport fraud, and serves a six-month sentence. From prison, Ajaj
frequently calls Ramzi Yousef and others in the WTC bombing plot, but no one
monitors or translates the calls until long after the bombing. [Los
Angeles Times, 10/14/01] An Israeli newsweekly later reports
that the Palestinian Ajaj may have been a mole for the Israeli Mossad. The
Village Voice has suggested that Ajaj may have had "advance knowledge of
the World Trade Center bombing, which he shared with Mossad, and that Mossad, for
whatever reason, kept the secret to itself." Ajaj was not just
knowledgeable, but was involved in the planning of the bombing from his prison
cell. [Village
Voice, 8/3/93] Ajaj is released from prison three days after the WTC
bombing, but is later rearrested and sentenced to more than
100 years in prison. [Los
Angeles Times, 10/14/01] One of the manuals seized from Ajaj is horribly
mistranslated for the trial. For instance, the title page is said to say
"The Basic Rule," published in 1982, when in fact the title says
"Al-Qaeda" (which means "the base" in English), published
in 1989. Investigators later complain that a proper translation could have
shown an early connection between al-Qaeda and the WTC bombing. [New
York Times, 1/14/01]
December 1992: A bomb
explodes in a hotel in Aden, Yemen, killing two tourists. US soldiers had just
left the hotel for Somalia. Intelligence agents suspect this may be the first
terrorist attack against the US connected to bin Laden. [Miami
Herald, 9/24/01]
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1993: Canadian police arrest Ali Mohamed, a high ranking al-Qaeda
figure. However, they release him when the FBI says he is a US agent. [Globe and
Mail, 11/22/01] Mohamed, a former US Army sergeant, then will continue to
work for al-Qaeda for a number of years. He trains bin Laden's personal
bodyguards and trains a terrorist cell in Kenya that later blows up the US
embassy there. Meanwhile, at least between 1993 and 1997 he tells secrets to
the FBI about al-Qaeda's operations. He is arrested in late 1998 and
subsequently convicted of his role in the 1998 US embassy bombing in Kenya. [CNN, 10/30/98, Independent,
11/1/98] Says a former Egyptian intelligence officer: "For five years
he was moving back and forth between the US and Afghanistan. It's impossible
the CIA thought he was going there as a tourist. If the CIA hadn't caught on to
him, it should be dissolved and its budget used for something worthwhile."
[Wall
Street Journal, 11/26/01] Was Mohamed really playing the FBI and CIA for
fools, or was he a double agent inside al-Qaeda? If the latter, why couldn't
the US kill bin Laden in the 1990s if the head of his personal security was
secretly a US agent?
1993 (B): Bin Laden buys a jet from the US military in Arizona (the Pentagon
approved the transaction). This aircraft is later used to transport missiles
from Pakistan that kill American special forces in Somalia. He also has some of
his followers begin training as pilots in US flight schools. These initial
flight trainings come to nothing when details are later revealed in a court
case about Operation Bojinka (see January
6, 1995). [Sunday
Herald, 9/16/01]
1993 (C): An expert panel commissioned by the Pentagon postulates that an
airplane could be used as a missile to bomb national landmarks. But the panel
doesn't publish this idea in its report, Terror 2000. [Washington
Post, 10/2/01] One of the authors of the report
says. "We were told by the Department of Defense not to put it in... and I
said, 'It's unclassified, everything is available.' And they said, 'We don't
want it released, because you can't handle a crisis before it becomes a crisis.
And no one is going to believe you.'" [ABC
News, 2/20/02] However, in 1994 one of the panel's
experts will write in Futurist magazine: "Targets such as the World Trade
Center not only provide the requisite casualties but, because of their symbolic
nature, provide more bang for the buck. In order to maximize their odds for
success, terrorist groups will likely consider mounting multiple, simultaneous
operations with the aim of overtaxing a government's ability to respond, as
well as demonstrating their professionalism and reach." [Washington
Post, 10/2/01]
January
1993: In his last days in office as Defense Secretary, Dick
Cheney releases a document called Defense Strategy for the 1990s. It reasserts
the plans for US global domination outlined in an earlier Pentagon policy paper
(see March 8, 1992). [Harper's,
10/02] But because of Clinton's presidential victory, the implementation of
these plans will have to wait until Bush Jr. becomes president in 2001 and
Cheney becomes vice president. However, Cheney and others will continue to
refine this vision of global domination through the Project for the New
American Century think tank while they wait to reassume political power (see June
3, 1997 and September 2000).
January 20,
1993: Bill Clinton is inaugurated as president, replacing George Bush Sr.
He remains president until 2001 (see January 21, 2001).
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February
26, 1993: An attempt to blow up the WTC fails. Six
people are killed in the misfired blast. Analysts later determine that had
the terrorists not made a minor error in the placement of the bomb, both towers
could have fallen and up to 50,000 people could have been killed. The
attempt is organized by Ramzi Yousef, who has close ties to bin Laden. [Congressional
Hearings, 2/24/98] The New York Times later reports on
Emad Salem, an undercover agent who ends up being the key government witness in
the trial against the bomber. Salem testifies that the FBI knew about the
attack beforehand and told him they would thwart it by substituting a harmless
powder for the explosives. However, this plan was called off by an FBI
supervisor, and the bombing was not stopped. [New
York Times, 10/28/93] Why did the FBI seemingly let
the terrorists go ahead with the bombing? Others suspects are ineptly
investigated before the bombing (see July 1990 and November
5, 1990). Several of the bombers were trained by the CIA to fight in
the Afghan war, and the CIA later concludes in internal documents that it was
"partly culpable" for this bombing attempt. [Independent,
11/1/98] Ahmad Ajaj, an
associate of Yousef, may have been a mole for the Israeli Mossad, and the
Mossad may have had advanced knowledge of the bombing (see September 1, 1992). US officials later state that the overall mastermind of the 9/11
attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, is a close relative of Ramzi Yousef, [Independent,
6/6/02] probably his uncle. [Los
Angeles Times, 9/1/02] One of the attackers even left a message found by
investigators stating, "Next time, it will be very precise." 9/11 can
be seen as a completion of this failed attack. [AP,
9/30/01]
June
1993-October 1994: Saeed Sheikh, a brilliant British
student at the London School of Economics, drops out of school and moves to his
homeland of Pakistan to become a terrorist. Two months later, he begins
training in Afghanistan at camps run by al-Qaeda and the Pakistani army. By
mid-1994, he has become a terrorist instructor. In June 1994, he begins
kidnapping Western tourists in India. In October 1994, he is captured after
kidnapping three Britons and an American, and is put in a maximum-security
prison (see November 1994-December 1999). The ISI
pays for a lawyer to defend him. [Los
Angeles Times, 2/9/02, Daily
Mail, 7/16/02, Vanity
Fair, 8/02] His supervisor for his terror work is an ISI officer named Ijaz
Shah (see February
5, 2002). [Times
of India, 3/12/02, Guardian,
7/16/02] Al-Qaeda and the ISI later rescue him from prison (see December
24-31, 1999) and he becomes a
central figure in the financing of the 9/11 plot (see Early
August 2001 (D)).
October
3-4, 1993: Eighteen US soldiers are attacked and killed in
Mogadishu, Somalia, in a spontaneous gun battle (later the subject of the movie
Black Hawk Down). A 1998 US indictment charges bin Laden and his
followers with training the attackers. [PBS
Frontline, 10/3/02] The link between bin Laden and the
Somali killers of US soldiers appears to be Pakistani terrorist Maulana Masood
Azhar. [Los
Angeles Times, 2/25/02] Azhar is associated with Pakistan's ISI (see December
24-31, 1999), and the US has not publicly
complained that he is a free man in Pakistan (see December 14, 2002).
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November
1993: The Indian government gives approval for Enron's Dabhol
power plant, located near Bombay on the west coast of India. Enron has invested
$3 billion, the largest single foreign investment in India's
history. Enron owns 65 percent of Dabhol. This liquefied natural gas
powered plant is supposed to provide one-fifth of India's energy needs by
1997 [Asia Times,
1/81/01, Indian
Express, 2/27/00] It is the largest gas-fired power plant in the world.
Earlier in the year, the World Bank concludes that the plant is "not
economically viable" and refuses to invest in it. [New York Times,
3/20/01] Enron apparently tries to make the plant financially viable by
investing in gas fields in nearby Uzbekistan (see June
24, 1996), but it cannot get that gas to Dabhol without a gas
pipeline through Afghanistan (see June 24, 1996 and June 1998 (B)). Construction of
the plant is abandoned just before completion (see June 2001 (J)).
1994: Mohammed al-Khilewi, the First Secretary at the Saudi Mission
to the United Nations, defects and seeks political asylum in the US. He brings
with him 14,000 internal government documents depicting the Saudi royal
family's corruption, human-rights abuses, and financial support for terrorists.
He meets with two FBI agents and an Assistant US Attorney. "We gave them a sampling of the documents and put them on
the table," says his lawyer, "but the agents refused to accept
them." [New Yorker,
10/16/01] The documents include "details of the $7 billion the Saudis
gave to [Iraq leader] Saddam Hussein for his nuclear program -- the first
attempt to build an Islamic Bomb." But FBI agents were "ordered not
to accept evidence of Saudi criminal activity, even on US soil." [Best Democracy Money Can
Buy, by Greg Palast, 2/03]
1994 (B): Coincidentally, three separate attacks this year involve hijacking
airplanes to crash them into buildings. A disgruntled Federal Express worker
tries to crash a DC-10 into a company building in Memphis but is overpowered by
the crew. A lone pilot crashes a small plane onto the White House grounds,
just missing the President's bedroom. An Air France flight is hijacked by
a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda, with the aim of crashing it into the
Eiffel Tower, but French Special Forces storm the plane before it takes
off. [New
York Times, 10/3/01]
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Early 1994-January 1995: 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed lives in the Philippines for a year, planning the Bojinka plot until the plot is exposed and he has to flee (see January 6, 1995). Police later say he lives a very expensive and non-religious lifestyle. He meets in karaoke bars and go-go clubs, dates go-go dancers, stays in four-star hotels, and takes scuba diving lessons. Once he rents a helicopter just to fly it past the window of a girlfriend's office in an attempt to impress her. This appears to be a pattern; for instance he has a big drinking party in 1998. [Los Angeles Times, 6/24/02] Officials beli