Month: December 2020
A New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 explodes in mid-air and crashes into the Scottish village of Lockerbie, killing all 259 aboard and 11 on the ground.
Thus begins a saga of assigning blame for the attack, which is ultimately tied to Libyan agents of Muammar Gaddafi’s secret services. Libya formally admitted responsibility 15 years later in August 2003 and offers $2.7 billion compensation to victims’ families.
A grand jury in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) returns an indictment against five additional suspects in the case of the United States v. Usama bin Laden, et al. The five suspects—Saif Al-Adel, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (Abu Muhammad al-Masri), Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah, Ahmed Mohamed Hamed Ali, and Anas Al-Libi—are charged in the overall conspiracy, led by al Qaeda, to kill U.S. nationals and engage in other illegal acts.
In addition, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah is charged for his role as the mastermind of the August 7, 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah was gunned down on the streets of Tehran in August 2020.
Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah was killed in an airstrike or drone strike in October 2006.
Ahmed Mohamed Hamed Ali was killed in a drone strike in 2010.
Anas al-Libi was captured by operators of the Joint Special Operations Command in Libya on October 5, 2013. Ten days later, he appeared in Manhattan federal court and pled not guilty to terrorism charges. His trial was scheduled for January 2015, but he died just before it began in a New York hospital.
Saif al-Adel, if alive, is still at large 20 years later.
Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilots who would hit the North and South towers at the World Trade Center take their commercial pilot license tests at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida, completing their initial training. Atta receives a score of 93 in 116 minutes and Shehhi received a score of 73 in 99 minutes. They each receive their FAA temporary airman certificate, qualifying them as “commercial pilots” on December 21.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) graduates with an engineering degree from North Carolina A&T University, Jesse Jackson’s alma mater.
KSM had entered the United States four years earlier, first attending Chowan College in Murfreesboro to improve his English language proficiency. During his time in America, KSM mostly hung out with other Middle Eastern students. But he also attended lectures at East Coast mosques promoting the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which had invaded the country at the end of 1979. Those lectures are now thought to have included fundraising trips by Aymen al-Zawahiri and Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, who were free to travel in the U.S. (Azzam was Osama bin Laden’s intellectual mentor.)
With a Pakistani passport, but having grown up in Kuwait (as the son of an oil industry guest worker), KSM was already a man of the world. And after he graduated, he went from Kuwait to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he joined his brother, Zahed, who ran one of many NGOs providing aid and relief for fighters and refugees from Afghanistan.
U.N. weapons inspectors evacuate Iraq for the last time, removing with them a secret NSA telephone monitoring device that American agents had brought in under United Nations cover.
After weeks of disputes and obstructions by the Iraqis—stopping or interfering with inspections of “presidential sites” and other sensitive installations associated with Saddam Hussein’s protect—UNSCOM Chairman Richard Butler decides to withdraw all U.N. staff, setting the stage for American airstrikes.
President Clinton then signs the orders for Operation Desert Fox, and airstrikes against Iraqi targets begin just before 1 AM (2200 GMT on December 16). Desert Fox is aimed officially, according to the White House, against Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that his country had also been left with “no option” but to mount the strikes. Russia and China condemn the actions and Russia recalls its ambassador from Washington. The next day, Russia recalls its ambassador to London.
Secretary Albright holds a briefing on Desert Fox and was asked how she would respond to those who say that, unlike the 1991 Gulf War, this campaign “looks like mostly an Anglo-American mission.” She answers: “We are now dealing with a threat, I think, that is probably harder for some to understand because it is a threat of the future, rather than a present threat, or a present act such as a border crossing, a border aggression. And here, as the president described in his statement yesterday, we are concerned about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s ability to have, develop, deploy weapons of mass destruction and the threat that that poses to the neighbors, to the stability of the Middle East, and therefore, ultimately to ourselves.”
There are, of course, no real nuclear, chemical and biological weapons left, but then the actual targets of Desert Fox strikes are security-related facilities associated with Saddam’s presidential guards—with the hope that their destruction might provoke a coup or uprising. Inspectors don’t return to Iraq until 2003, in an eleventh hour effort to stave off the second Gulf War.
Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law is arrested in Morgan Hill, California.
Muhammed Jamal A. Khalifa, a Saudi, is arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He had been sentenced to death in Jordan for plotting to assassinate Jordanian government officials and planting bombs in two movie theaters, explosions which injured 11 people. He had entered the U.S. on December 1.
Khalifa (aka Jalal Khalifat, Gamal Khalifat, Mohammad J.A. Khalifah, Jamal Khalifah, Abdallah Khalifah Abu Bara, Abudul Barashid, Abu Salah), born 1 February 1957 in Medina, Saudi Arabia, is thought to be the brother-in-law to Osama bin Laden. (One of his four wives is a sister of bin Laden). He is believed at the time to have been living for the previous six or more years in Manila, and to be the leader of a terrorist cell in the Philippines (and involved in the so-called “Bojinka” plotting to kill the Pope and bomb U.S. airliners.)
Khalifa was deported in May to Jordan but was later acquitted of all charges and allowed to return to Saudi Arabia. The famed “28 pages” from the 9/11 Commission later speculates that the Saudis “bought off” the Jordanians for the return of Khalifa. As the report states, “Khalifa now works for a Riyadh-based NGO and travels and operates freely.”
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia telephones George W. Bush to finally congratulate him on being elected president. The Saudi press release reads:
“Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd bin Abdulaziz yesterday telephoned George W. Bush to congratulate him on his election as the 43rd President of the United States of America and wish him every success, stressing the deep-rooted historical relations between the two friendly countries. Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz made a similar telephone call.
Earlier, King Fahd sent a cable of congratulations to the President-Elect, expressing in his own name and on behalf of the people and government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia best wishes for continued success and a good leadership of the American people. He confirmed the ties of friendship that bind the two countries and declared that the Saudi leadership looks forward to enhancing these relations for the sake of consolidating the bases of security, stability and peace not only in the Middle East but in the whole world. Crown Prince Abdullah sent a similar cable, as did Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector-Gen Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz.”
In Khobar, site of the June 1996 bombing of the U.S. military base, a terrorist bomb goes off, severely injuring a British citizen.
Ahmed Ressam, traveling on a Canadian passport under the name of Benni Antoine Noris, is arrested at Port Angeles, Washington at the U.S.-Canadian border. His car contains bomb-making chemicals and detonator components and he is entering the U.S. with the intention of blowing up a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve.
Algerian native Ahmed Ressam is later found to have trained in Afghanistan al Qaeda camps in Khalden and Darunta, receiving instructions on bomb making and probably the Los Angeles assignment. His case involved terrible failures by French and Canadian authorities. Ressam managed to initially fly from France to Montreal using a photo-substituted French passport under another false name, that of Tahar Medijadi. Under questioning in Canada, he admitted that the passport was fraudulent and claimed political asylum. He was released pending a hearing, which he failed to attend. He was then arrested four times for pick-pocketing, usually from tourists, but was never jailed nor deported.
Ressam eventually obtained his genuine Canadian passport through a document vendor who stole a blank baptismal certificate from a Catholic church. He used the passport to travel to Pakistan, and from there to Afghanistan for his training, returning to Canada before attempting to enter the United States.
Though the CIA and others in the Clinton administration would later crow about the capture of Ressam, his arrest in Port Angeles was completely by chance, due to the work of an individual customs agent on the spot (who had never received any terrorist warnings from higher headquarters or Washington).
“In looking back,” George Tenet later wrote, “much more should have been made about the significance of this event. While Ressam’s plot was foiled, his arrest signaled that al Qaeda was coming here.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 126)
FBI director Louis Freeh briefs White House national security advisor Sandy Berger about the conclusion that Iran and Hizballah were behind the terrorist attack at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
According to Freeh, Berger asks, “Who knows about this,” saying the Bureau’s conclusions seem to be hearsay. Later, Berger convenes a meeting including Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Henry (Hugh) Shelton, and CIA director George Tenet.
Freeh writes: “I thought that we were meeting to discuss what our next move would be, given the fact that we now had solid evidence that Iranians, with involvement at the highest official levels, had blown up nineteen Americans. But I was wrong. The meeting started with how to deal with the press and Congress, should news of Iranian involvement in the Khobar murders leak outside of the room.”
Freeh says that Shelton invited him to the ‘tank’ at the Pentagon to brief the Joint Chiefs on Iranian sponsorship. There, Marine Corps commandant Chuck Krulak said he would do whatever was necessary to bring the Khobar bombers to justice, “even if that meant taking on the White House.” (My FBI, pp. 29ff) Nothing was really ever done. The Iran connection faded into history.
Hani Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hazmi arrive in Mesa, Arizona from San Diego in preparation for Hanjour—the pilot of the plane that hit the Pentagon—to renew his flight certification and practice handling the controls of large commercial airliners.
Hanjour and al-Hazmi rent apartment #10 on 2221 West Farmdale Avenue and Hanjour enrolls in refresher training. They move to apartment #2144, Indian Springs Village, 1031 South Stewart Street in Mesa in January.
Hanjour starts with classroom training at Arizona Aviation and then starts simulator training at Pan Am International Jet Tech through March 2001. The 9/11 Commission later said that flight instructors found his performance to be sub-standard and they discouraged Hanjour from continuing training.