Month: December 2020

11 December 1994

Posted on by William Arkin
Philippines Air plane

 

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s first international terrorist act is probably carried out when a bomb goes off on a Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Tokyo, via Mactan–Cebu International Airport. The small bomb is built and planted by Ramzi Yousef, the attacker of the World Trade Center in February 1993.

With false identification papers (he is an internationally-wanted man), Ramzi Yousef boards the flight in Manila. Onboard, sitting in seat 26K, he assembles a small bomb using nitrocellulose explosive that he secreted away in a contact lens cleaner bottle, with a Casio watch as the timer and initiator. He then puts the bomb in the life jacket pouch underneath the seat. When the plane lands in Cebu, Yousef debarks, and Japanese businessman Haruki Ikegami boards the flight and takes his seat. At cruising altitude over the Sea of Japan, the Casio alarm ignites the filament in the bomb and it detonates, killing Ikegami and blowing a hole in the fuselage. The pilot manages to bring the flight down for an emergency landing.

Though most histories credit Yousef with masterminding the plot, new information indicates that the attack on Philippine Airlines flight 434 (a Boeing 747-200 jumbo jet) was conceived and directed by KSM. The 9/11 planes operation then evolves from bombs planted on planes so that they would explode over water to using the planes themselves as missiles to strike objects on land.

10 December 1995

Posted on by William Arkin
John Deutch

 

CIA director John Deutch, brought over from the Pentagon in May to replace James Woolsey, who had resigned during Christmas, insults his own Agency, sort of setting the stage for a rocky tenure and the ascension of George Tenet.

The New York Times quotes Deutch slamming his own people, comparing CIA operations officers to military officers. “They certainly are not as competent, or as understanding of what their relative role is and what their responsibilities are,” Deutch says. Within six month, the rumor mill begins whispering that Deutch—scornful of his own people, aloof and technocratic—would be departing at the end of the year for the top job at the Pentagon (and indeed he stepped down on December 15, a year after he made his remarks.)

George Tenet, then Deutch’s deputy, disingenuously writes later that Deutch “abruptly resigned” when in fact he maneuvered behind the scenes to unseat Deutch and become director. (At the Center of the Storm, p. 5)

Deutch never got the Pentagon job, and in the ultimate act of revenge, CIA counterintelligence goons later pulled the former director’s security clearance for improperly handling classified material on his home computer.

9 December 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Fahd al Quso

 

Another missed opportunity occurs to expose the 9/11 plotters. Fahd al-Quso, an al Qaeda operative, is arrested in Yemen. In addition to being involved in the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, al-Quso was at a January 2000 meeting in Malaysia also attended by Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, the San Diego duo who would go on to become hijacker “musclemen” on 9/11.

The FBI tries to get direct access to al-Quso after his arrest but is thwarted by the government of Yemen. (He is finally interrogated days after 9/11 and reveals his presence in Malaysia in January 2000.)

The CIA write in a December 2000 cable it had learned that al-Quso had received $7,000 from someone named Ibrahim, which he delivered to “Khallad” in Southeast Asia. They incorrectly identify this “Khalled” as Khalid al-Mihdhar. Khallad turns out to be Walid Muhammad Salih bin Mubarak bin Attash, currently in Guantanamo detention camp, and a close associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

8 December 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Hani Hanjour, pilot of the plane that attacked the Pentagon, arrives in San Diego, California from Dubai (via Paris and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport).

The Saudi is sent to San Diego by al Qaeda to pick up Nawaf al-Hazmi—part of the San Diego duo of Khalid al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, the original two planes’ operatives sent to the United States in January 2000. They had been picked as pilots by Osama bin Laden, but neither managed to obtain pilots licenses, and Mihdhar left the U.S. six months later (only to return in July 2001). Nawaf, who could not speak English, needed a chaperone, as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed feared that his closeness to the Muslim community ran the risk of exposing him, not to the FBI but to Saudi intelligence.

Hanjour, the only hijacker/pilot with experience in the United States, then drives with al-Hazmi to Arizona, where he had previously lived, and undertakes additional flight training to brush up on his skills. The two then relocate to Northern Virginia.

7 December 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

CIA director George Tenet gives a presentation on “What U.S. Intelligence Does for You” at a town hall in Los Angeles. The Millennium threat scare and the Y2K rollover now behind the threat watchers, Tenet is all swagger and promotion.

“We have, since July 1998,” Tenet boasted, “in partnership with governments around the world, helped deliver to justice more than two dozen terrorists—more than half of whom were linked to Usama bin Laden. These actions have shattered terrorist cells and networks, disrupted terrorist plans, and—in some cases—prevented terrorist attacks from taking place.”

It is a speech that one gets the sense could be delivered any day or any year, that typical happy talk of government which pretends real progress, and even resolution of problems, when in fact there is no true progress towards eliminating terrorism or even diminishing the size of the terrorist armies that would wish us harm.

6 December 1999

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Further increasing the level of anxiety about terrorist attacks during the Millennium transition, Jordanian authorities arrest 16 alleged terrorists who were accused of planning attacks on the John the Baptist’s shrine on the Jordan River and the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman. George Tenet later wrote: “The Jordanian intelligence service, through its able chief, Samikh Battikhi, told us that individuals on the team had direct links to Usama bin Ladin.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 125)

The CIA Counterterrorist Center circulates an intelligence report, according to Tenet: “accepting the theory that UBL [Osama bin Laden] wants to inflict maximum casualties, cause massive panic, and score a psychological victory, then UBL may be seeking to attack between 5 and 15 targets on the Millennium. Because the U.S. is UBL’s ultimate goal… we must assume that several of these targets will be in the U.S. …”

Over the next weeks, the CIA and allied intelligence services would launch operations in 55 countries against 38 separate targets to disrupt plots in the making and to arrest terrorists under surveillance. But there is no question that once the Millennium passed without incident, the intensity of these efforts would generally decline. And they had little impact on al Qaeda central.

Of note, the same Radisson hotel was one of three hotels in Amman later attacked within a half an hour of each other on the night on November 9, 2005. There, suicide bombers killed over 50 and wounded over 100.

5 December 1999

Posted on by William Arkin
Richard Clarke's book "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror"

 

A year after CIA director George Tenet’s “We Are at War” memo, White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke is still agitating for stronger action against al Qaeda, for a comprehensive strategy, for stronger covert action, for even the use of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan.

On December 4, Clarke wrote a memo to White House national security advisor Samuel “Sandy” Berger. In it, he laid out a proposal to attack al Qaeda facilities again in the week before the Millennium transition. On December 5, Clarke got the memo back. In the margin, Berger wrote “no.”

4 December 1998

Posted on by William Arkin
George Tenet

 

“We Are at War.” It is perhaps the most ridiculous memo ever written by a government bureaucrat, with neither the authority or the army to so declare. And it made no difference.

On the evening of December 3, CIA director George Tenet “furiously drafted” a longhand memo declaring war and telling his staff that “I wanted no resources or people spared in the effort to go after al Qaeda.”

“We must now enter a new phase in our effort against Bin Ladin,” Tenet wrote in the top-secret memo that circulated the next day. “We all acknowledge that retaliation [for American cruise missile attacks] is inevitable and that its scope may be far larger than we have previously experienced.”

Tenet later writes: “I want [deputy CIA director] Charlie Allen to immediately chair a meeting with NSA, NIMA, CITO [our clandestine information technology organization] and others to ensure we are doing everything we can to meet CTC’s [Counterterrorist Center] requirements.”

“The 9/11 Commission later said that I declared war but that no one showed up. They were wrong.” (At the Center of the Storm, pp. 118–119)

3 December 1995

Posted on by William Arkin
President Bill Clinton speaks to US troops

 

At the end of a five-day European tour, President Bill Clinton gives the order for the first group of American soldiers to go to Bosnia in the former Yugoslavia. About 700 soldiers are slated to deploy as part of an international peacekeeping force.

“I have authorized the secretary of defense to order the deployment of the preliminary troops … to Bosnia as I said I would as soon I was convinced that the military plan is appropriate,” Clinton said.

The remaining 20,000 U.S. forces are to be sent after the planned signing of the Bosnian peace treaty on December 14. In total, 25 countries are slated to send peacekeepers.

“Our destiny in America is still linked to Europe,” Clinton said, sort of sad commentary on an America or two geographic realities—the European domination and the challenges everywhere else in the world. The CIA is already engaged in covert operations against al Qaeda (and the next day George Tenet would declare war) but the Middle East—outside of dealing with rogues Iraq and Iran and protecting Israel—barely gets a strategic consideration. Is American destiny linked to Europe? It is a question we could still debate today.

2 December 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Ramzi Binalshibh, the fourth of the Hamburg Four, and the only one unable to obtain a U.S. visa (because of his being Yemeni, not because of terrorism suspicions) arrives in London from Germany (the FBI believes to meet with Zacarias Moussaoui). The Frenchman flew into London from Pakistan.

Moussaoui was arrested on August 16, 2001 and charged with an immigration violation. He had aroused suspicion of the FBI while in flight training in Eagan, Minnesota. During his trial, federal prosecutors said that he was to have been a replacement for Binalshibh, the so-called 20th hijacker. Though there is no doubt that Moussaoui was in the U.S. to prepare for some al Qaeda planes operations, there is no evidence (other than the London meeting) connecting him to 9/11.