10 November 2000

Posted on November 10, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

CIA analysts brief the White House Small Group on their preliminary findings that the October attack on the USS Cole in Yemen was carried out by a cell of Yemeni residents with some ties to the transnational “mujahideen” network. According to the briefing, these local residents likely had some support from al Qaeda. The CIA concluded that it had little intelligence to prove outside sponsorship, support, and direction of the operation. (See 911 Commission, p. 194)

The report was later shared with the incoming Bush administration and it likely influenced their decision not to retaliate against al Qaeda, President Bush already expressing that he was done “swatting at flies.” But the conviction not to employ cruise missiles—and to approach terrorism in new ways, “anything but Clinton” (ABC) some described the new policy as being—also stalled any momentum towards understanding the al Qaeda threat. The CIA would scramble mightily to get White House attention with regard to al Qaeda, and though that inattention was later used to excuse the Agency and blame the White House for 9/11, it was, in fact, that November 10, 2000 report that is most instructive. The CIA just lacked hard intelligence—even if the Bush White House paid attention perhaps the plot would have never been uncovered.

9 November 2000

Posted on November 9, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

George W. Bush’s lead over Al Gore in all-or-nothing Florida presidential race slips beneath 300 votes in a suspense-filled recount. Vice President Gore telephones Bush to concede but then calls back about an hour later to retract his concession.

Bush’s camp presses Gore to concede without pursuing multiple recounts. The unofficial tally gives Bush a 327-vote lead. A statewide recount begins in Florida the next day. Over the next two weeks, some 19,000 votes were disqualified.

Gore then takes the presidential election to the courts, claiming “an injustice unparalleled in our history.” Bush’s team goes to court, seeking an order to block manual recounts. When Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announces she would end the recounting at 5 p.m. on November 14, it prompts an immediate appeal by Gore lawyers.

8 November 1998

Posted on November 8, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

The United States posts a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden in light of his indictment (see November 4).

Diplomatic inquiries are made of the Taliban government in Afghanistan to turn him over. They respond by offering to try bin Laden themselves. After a secret court hearing, and with no U.S. representative present, they find him “innocent” of wrongdoing.

Much has been written about the reasons for Taliban support of bin Laden—that he was bankrolling the regime, or that al Qaeda was helping to fight the normal tribes and alliances resisting Taliban rule and still holding parts of the country. But he didn’t have that much money left after leaving Sudan (and losing much) and al Qaeda wasn’t really engaged in combat. Instead it was a genuine ideological affinity, especially given international condemnation of the Taliban. And Saudi insistence. Perhaps. It was one of only three countries recognizing and supporting the Taliban.

7 November 2000

Posted on November 7, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Saudi Arabia opens a border-crossing point with Iraq to facilitate Saudi exports to Iraq under the U.N. “oil for food” program. The land border had been closed between the two countries since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Since at least 1998 (when U.N. inspectors were ejected from the country), sanctions against Iraq had been crumbling, prominent countries like France and Russia increasingly contracting with Baghdad, commercial air travel restored, and illicit trade increasing.

There’s no evidence now that much weapons-of-mass-destruction materials flowed into the country between 1998 and 9/11, but the general crumbling of sanctions worried Washington that indeed Saddam would escape from “the box” he’d been put in.

Colin Powell in particular as Secretary of State in the new administration would seek to reinvigorate sanctions with his proposed “smart sanctions” regime. But the program never got off the ground before 9/11 and then certain war with Iraq loomed.

6 November 2000

Posted on November 6, 2020November 6, 2020 by William Arkin

On Election Eve in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi take their instrument rating airplane test at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida. Atta receives a score of 90 in 122 minutes and al-Shehhi receives a score of 75 in 89 minutes. Two weeks later, they each receive an FAA Temporary Airman Certificate, qualifying them as “private pilots.”

With their temporary licenses, the two were then able to sign out airplanes for solo flights. They did so on a number of occasions, often returning at 2:00 and 3:00 A.M., after logging four or five hours of flying time. They would also begin training simulations to fly larger commercial airliners, though neither would pilot or even co-pilot a commercial jet before September 11.

5 November 1990

Posted on November 5, 2020November 6, 2020 by William Arkin

Rabbi Meir Kahane, an American-born Zionist extremist and founder of the Jewish Defense League, is assassinated at a Marriott Hotel in midtown Manhattan. It is perhaps the first case of radical Islamic terrorism on America’s shores, and certainly a precursor to all that would follow, from the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center to 9/11.

El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born American citizen, infiltrated the hotel, where Kahane was giving a speech. Others who were later involved in the February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center accompanied him or waited outside in getaway cars.

As Kahane was leaving the ballroom, Nosair shot him twice, killing him. He ran from the room, shouting “It’s Allah’s will!” At the door, a man tried to stop him and Nosair shot him in the leg and fled. Confronted by a U.S. postal police officer outside the hotel, Nosair also shot him. The officer, wearing a bulletproof vest, fired back, hitting Nosair, who was taken to Bellevue hospital.

Nosair was acquitted of the murder but convicted of lesser, related charges. When federal agents raided Nosair’s New Jersey residence after his arrest, they found many incriminating items, including a sermon by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (the “Blind Sheikh”) that urged followers to attack “the edifices of capitalism.” He would be later convicted on terrorist conspiracy to life in prison. FBI investigators reportedly later found that Osama bin Laden had paid for Nosair’s defense.

4 November 1998

Posted on November 4, 2020November 6, 2020 by William Arkin

Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda lieutenants are indicted in the Southern District of New York.

The unsealed indictment, resulting from the African embassy bombings, included bin Laden; al Qaeda operational chief Mohammed Atef; Wadih El Hage, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (also known as Harun Fazul); Mohamed Sadiq Odeh; and Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali. Both bin Laden and Atef are added to the Department of State Rewards Program.

The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hizballah. The original sealed indictment, according to the 9/11 Commission (p. 128) had added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.” Interestingly, this language about al Qaeda’s “understanding” with Iraq was dropped from the final indictment filed in November 1998.

Upon the indictment, a threat advisory was sent by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) headquarters to all immigration inspectors at ports of entry. It warned of possible infiltration into the United States by radical Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to bin Laden. It calls for “hard” inspections of certain visitors from Middle Eastern countries. It seems to have no effect whatsoever.

CIA director George Tenet would later write: “I can’t imagine this fazed him in the least since he was living comfortably in his Afghan sanctuary.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 109)

3 November 1999

Posted on November 3, 2020November 6, 2020 by William Arkin

Able Danger is born, certainly one of the strangest, over-hyped and forgotten pre-9/11 phantasms of the intelligence community.

U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), nominally engaged in counter-terrorism in a war that is not yet a war, seeks to exploit new datamining techniques to network terrorist organizations. SOCOM contacts the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC) in Dahlgren, Virginia and the Army’s Information Dominance Center at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, both of which are pioneers in systems and cyber analysis.

In the words of retired Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (participant, whistleblower, television commentator), JWAC “did not understand the scope of trying to do neural-netting, human factor relationships and looking at linkages. They just didn’t have the capability at the time.” Instead, the Able Danger project partnered with the Army IDC, its own super-secret slush fund for research and development.

Eventually, the Defense Intelligence Agency would take over the Able Danger project and shut it down, mostly because the participants had violated civil liberties rules and collected information on Americans.

But the participants—Shaffer being the most vocal—would claim after 9/11 that there was some nefarious reason for the project to be halted. And not only that, but that Able Danger managed to identify Mohammed Atta and could have prevented the attacks.

It is, in hindsight, an impossibility, for none of Atta’s personal details were known to any agency, and nor was he ever living in Brooklyn, which Shaffer asserts. The whole Able Danger controversy eventually led to Congressional hearings and lots of recriminations, but the real lesson learned—that these boutique and off-the-books projects rarely produce anything, was never learned.

2 November 1999

Posted on November 2, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

The 24/7 millennium threat surge begins at the CIA and throughout the intelligence community. The threat of a terrorist attack over the millennium celebrations, together with any threats associated with the Y2K computer rollover, become the top priority for the entire intelligence community.

The CIA creates an elaborate disruption campaign against al Qaeda and other cells of terrorists, particularly in Jordan and Lebanon, and indeed Jordanian officials arrested a number of terrorists linked to al Qaeda.

Between November and the millennium, the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and other elements of the government’s counter-terror apparatus worked overtime and on supplemental budgets, both of which would have profound effects later on activities in 2000 as more secure funding was sought and the primary counter-terrorism personnel adjusted to “normal” schedules.

Did the millennium itself justify the resources? And did the government pay the price for its focus on stopping a single terrorist strike (and then relaxing once it did)? One will never know, but the effect of anniversary warnings—whether it be July 4th before 9/11, or September 11th—ever since has served to focus more attention on tactical and short-term interdiction rather than the big picture.

1 November 1998

Posted on November 1, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

Mohammed Atta, Said Bahaji and Ramzi Binalshibh move into a four bedroom apartment at 54 Marienstrasse in Hamburg, Germany. It becomes known as the house of martyrs and over the 28 months that Atta’s name is on the lease, 29 Middle Eastern and North African men live in the apartment or register it as their home address.

Up to six men at a time live at the apartment, including other al Qaeda operatives, particularly Atta’s partner Marwan al-Shehhi. Atta, Binalshibh and al-Shehhi (together with a fourth of the “Hamburg Group,” Ziad Jarrah) travel to Afghanistan together to participate in jihad and are recruited for the plane’s operation. Binalshibh would relocate to Berlin after this and become a middle-man to the pilot hijackers in the United States, unable to obtain an American visa.

Marientstrasse would become famous later for the Islamic activity going on under the noses of German authorities. Many of its residents would later be arrested.