30 November 1999

Posted on November 30, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

The so-called “Millennium Plot” is first detected, leading to the arrest of numerous plotters in Amman, Jordan. Jordanian intelligence uncovered the al Qaeda plot to attack the Radisson Hotel as well as other sites on the night of December 31/January 1, linking local extremists to Abu Zubaydah, an al Qaeda operative then-considered to be Osama bin Laden’s top terrorist planner.

When Zubaydah was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002 (and severely injured in a fire fight), he was characterized as “chief of operations” for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s “number three” with the assumption that he was the main 9/11 planner. He wasn’t of course—that was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But he would go on to be the first captive to be water boarded and tortured at CIA black sites.

As an interesting aside: after 9/11, many would report that Abu Zubaydah made a mistake and said in an intercepted telephone call that “the grooms are ready for the big wedding,” a tip-off which U.S. intelligence had already determined was a reference to an attack. (The Cell, p. 214) The 9/11 Commission reported, though, that Zubaydah actually said “the time for training is over.” (9/11 Commission, pp. 174–175).

Somehow then—and even now—terrorism experts think it is effective to stress that al Qaeda operatives make mistakes, or they don’t understand Islam, or were “failures”—such as that the Hamburg Three did poorly in pilot training—to delegitimize when none of those things seem to make a bit of difference in their ability and willingness to continue to attack. Nor do they dissuade others from joining their ranks.

29 November 1999

Posted on November 29, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Mohammed Atta travels from Hamburg, Germany to Karachi, Pakistan via Istanbul, spending the night in Turkey. Despite the African embassy bombings in August 1998, American military retaliation, and CIA covert operations, he and his compatriots have no trouble reaching Afghanistan.

Atta is already the leader of the Hamburg Four, and together with Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Ramzi Binalshibh, they travel to Kandahar and then on to Khalden camp, where they meet with the al Qaeda operational commander Abu Hafs (Mohammed Atef) and Osama bin Laden. Abu Hafs spotted them immediately as special, according to various accounts, especially the three who would go on to pilot the 9/11 planes (Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah). They were educated, had technical skills, could speak English, and had learned how to live in the West. They also came from countries—Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates—where they wouldn’t have trouble obtaining U.S. visas. By the time they leave Afghanistan, they have their broad assignments.

28 November 1998

Posted on November 28, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

The Washington Post reports that the CIA has launched its largest recruiting campaign since the Cold War, looking for linguists in Arabic, Farsi, Korean, Chinese and other languages increasingly in demand given the “proliferating new dangers” of the post-bipolar world.

“To increase the effectiveness of its campus recruiting, the CIA has narrowed its focus to 66 colleges and universities with which it either has—or hopes to develop—close recruiting ties. The list includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Cornell, Maryland, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Howard, Grambling, Brigham Young, Texas A&M, Texas, Michigan, Ohio State, Purdue, Stanford and Berkeley.”

The exercise would be a bust for three reasons: One, that “native” speakers and people of color were often also turned away from the Agency because they could not get security clearances or were not the “type” of person that fit with the lily-white Agency. Second, the personnel and promotion systems of the Agency often mis-utilized skilled linguists, relegating them to translation and administrative tasks rather than prestigious case officers. And three, the emergence of machine translation, which seemed to suggest that the old, large pools of Russian linguists were no longer really needed.

In any case, the “high-demand/low-density” languages have never been fully subscribed and by 9/11, there were only a few dozen Arabic speakers focused on counter-terrorism and very few actually running the “war” against bin Laden.

27 November 1993

Posted on November 27, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

An American diplomat, on his way to a Thanksgiving reception, is kidnapped in Yemen, the first known kidnapping of a diplomat in Yemen. Reporting on the kidnapping describes “the country south of Saudi Arabia” as “faction ridden” and ascribed the hostage taking to “a squabble between competing factions.” The press reported that “conservative” North Yemen and formerly Marxist South Yemen united to create the latest version of the country. Interior ministry officials said the diplomat—Haynes R. Mahoney—had been taken to Marib, which the news media described as “oil rich,” its only seeming geopolitical frame of reference.

“There has been little activity in Yemen by radical Muslim fundamentalist groups that might strike at American targets in response to President Clinton’s meeting on Wednesday with the novelist Salman Rushdie,” the New York Times said, the narcissistic frame of reference virtually oblivious to the emergence of radical Islam.

26 November 1996

Posted on November 26, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Saudi citizen Hani Hanjour, who would go on to pilot the plane that attacked the Pentagon, departs the United States for Saudi Arabia. He had been living in Scottsdale, Arizona and attending flight training, where he was hoping to become a commercial airline pilot.

Hanjour was the only one of the four 9/11 hijackers who had been to the United States prior to June 2000. He lived in the U.S. in October 1991 and enrolled in English language school in Tucson. He then returned in 1996, arriving in New York on April 2, living for a month in Florida before moving to Oakland, California, where he attended English language school at the ELS Language Center at Holy Names College (3510 Mountain Boulevard in Oakland, CA) from May until August 1996.

Though the 9/11 plot didn’t begin until much later—and Hanjour was the last of the pilots to join the group—his earlier residence and travel in the United States (and his attending flight school) never attracted the attention of any authorities or the intelligence community, such was the blind trust given over to Saudi citizens.

25 November 1999

Posted on November 25, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

The “Hamburg Four” begin their journey to join al Qaeda, ultimately being assigned to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s “planes operation.”

Ziad Jarrah flies from Hamburg, Germany to Karachi, Pakistan via Istanbul, on Turkish Airlines flight 1662 and the 1056, the first of the “Hamburg Four” to fly to Afghanistan. He stays in Pakistan for two months.

According to the interrogations of Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the four (and now in Guantanamo), sometime in 1999, the four decided to act on their beliefs and to pursue jihad against the Russians in Chechnya. They were advised that it was difficult to get to Chechnya and that they should go to Afghanistan first. The four then traveled separately to Quetta in Pakistan, meeting with a trusted representative, who arranged their passage to Kandahar.

In Afghanistan, the four have an audience with Osama bin Laden and pledge loyalty, knowing that they were volunteering for a martyrdom operation. They were instructed to enroll in flight training. Mohammed Atta was chosen to lead the group, and before they left Afghanistan, he met with bin Laden and received a preliminary list of targets: the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. (See 911 Commission, p. 166; 911 Commission, Staff Statement 16, p. 3)

24 November 1998

Posted on November 24, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Martin Indyk wraps up meetings with 16 Iraqi opposition groups in London. The meetings, arranged by the British Foreign Office, seeks to unite the expatriate groups as a viable alternative to Saddam Hussein. The groups pledge to work to indict the Iraqi president for war crimes as one means of uniting Iraqi public opinion against him.

“We are not talking here about the opposition groups being involved in activities that are designed to overthrow violently the regime in Baghdad. We are talking about the opposition groups developing political support for a new Iraq, a new open, democratic Iraq,” the Foreign Office junior minister said.

By late 1998, with much of the White House’s (and the CIA’s) attention shifted to al Qaeda, Iraq had fallen off the radar screen, and with an end to U.N. inspections, there was little new reliable intelligence coming from inside the country. But Congress passed a law allowing President Clinton to spend 93 million dollars helping anti-Saddam groups and the beginning of the end was afoot, particularly in providing an outsize role to the Iraqi exiles, who later would manipulate both the Clinton and Bush administrations with fake intelligence and false promises of support inside the country. Indyk would go on to become ambassador to Israel (1999–2001), a position he also filled from 1995–1997.

23 November 1985

Posted on November 23, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

An EgyptAir airliner bound from Athens, Greece to Malta and carrying several U.S. citizens was hijacked by the Abu Nidal Organization, a renegade Palestinian faction backed by Libya. Abu Nidal (Sabri Khalil al-Banna) split from the PLO in 1974 and founded the Abu Nidal group. The November 1985 hijacking is considered their first international terrorist attack.

Egyptian commandos attempted to storm the plane, during which the hijackers threw grenades inside the aircraft and 60 of the 95 passengers and crew died in the resulting explosions and fire. The Abu Nidal Organization would go on to carry out a number of particularly brutal international hijackings and attacks.

Abu Nidal was expelled from Libya in 1999 and he ultimately sought refuge in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He was killed in his Baghdad apartment in August 2002, some say by Iraqi secret police, some say he committed suicide. But the bottom line was that Saddam feared his independence and even possible work with the United States after 9/11, especially as an invasion of Iraq seemed coming.

Abu Nidal was probably the last of the individual charismatic terrorists—à la “Carlos the Jackal”—who could flourish in rogue states and evade international capture. And his organization’s many hijackings also ultimately lead to more and more efforts to secure air travel, a process that obviously didn’t happen until after 9/11.

22 November 1988

Posted on November 22, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Northrop’s B-2A “stealth” bomber is rolled out of its hanger at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, showcased to the public for the first time.

“We are not just rolling out America’s newest strategic bomber,” said Air Force Secretary Edward C. Aldridge Jr. “We are ushering in a new age of strategic deterrence.” Should deterrence fail, the theory at the time went, the bombers would fly into Soviet airspace undaunted by air defenses, seeking out and destroying surviving nuclear forces.

Of course the B-2 would go on to be used in Kosovo in 1999, where the hyperbole of its prowess—and its ability to evade Serbian air defenses—would match the pretenses of Bill Clinton’s war: bombing with minimum vulnerability of U.S. military personnel. After 9/11, the B-2 would also be extensively used in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, joining the general bombing campaigns, but never challenged by any air-defense threat. And that’s the thing about the B-2 as it ends in 30-plus year lifespan (to be followed by a new bomber, the B-21)—with satellite-guided bombs and a host of new techniques to disable enemy air defenses, it is an extremely expensive way to bomb, at least with conventional weapons.

21 November 2000

Posted on November 21, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Satam Muhammed Abdel Rahman al-Suqami, a 24-year-old Saudi who would end up being one on the musclemen on American Airlines Flight 11 that hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, gets a visa with an altered passport.

Suqami applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on November 21. After 9/11, the FBI concluded that he had fraudulent travel stamps associated with al Qaeda. In his application, Suqami also left blank the line on which he was asked to supply the name and street address of his present employer. But Suqami raised no suspicions—that was the case with Saudis—and his application was approved the next day.

After 9/11, the FBI also pieced together that in the two years prior to the attacks, Suqami had traveled to Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Oman, and had taken additional international trips using Bahrain and the UAE as jumping off points.