11 January 2001

Posted on January 11, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

Marwan al-Shehhi (Mohammed Atta’s partner, and the pilot of the plane that would fly into the South Tower of the World Trade Center) takes an unexplained eight-day sojourn to Casablanca, Morocco.

Al-Shehhi flies from Tampa, Florida, to New York on Delta Flight 2522, and then on to Casablanca on Royal Air Maroc Flight 205. His trip followed Atta returning to Florida from his own foreign trip. The 9/11 Commission (Staff Statement 16, p. 7) doesn’t speculate about the reason for al-Shehhi’s trip, but it thought that perhaps he was seeking medical treatment (he is believed to have had cancer). But as a citizen of the UAE, there is no other connection to Morocco, nor are their al Qaeda operatives in the country who are connected to the 9/11 plot. It is possible that he flew the roundabout route to then fly home, but there is no evidence of that.

10 January 2001

Posted on January 10, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

President-elect George W. Bush is briefed in the famous and highly secure JCS “tank” at the Pentagon—on the national security situation and the immediate threats ahead.

The focus is on the immediate threat from Iraq, the absence of U.N. inspectors, the unravelling of international sanctions, the continued build-up of weapons of mass destruction, the hardening of Iraq’s air defense and communications infrastructure with buried fiber optics, Iraqi relations with terrorists, and Saddam’s Hussein’s human rights record. It is a bracing and single-minded presentation. In other words, Iraq wasn’t just some concoction of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. It was the number one threat as conceived by the Pentagon.

9 January 2001

Posted on January 9, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

The Washington Post fawns over Rumsfeld’s Rules and America is introduced to the “known unknowns” and other useless observations from the new secretary of defense: hundreds of pithy, compelling, and often humorous observations about leadership, business, and life.

The rules later earned praise from the Wall Street Journal as “required reading,” and from the New York Times which said: “Rumsfeld’s Rules can be profitably read in any organization. … The best reading, though, are his sprightly tips on inoculating oneself against that dread White House disease, the inflated ego.”

The mainstream media would sour on Rumsfeld in the first few months of the Bush administration, as he picked fights with the brass and controlled everything, flooding the defense establishment with his famous “snowflakes”—observations, questions, orders, the pre-Tweeting tweets of a narcissist. By the time 9/11 came about, Rumsfeld’s stock was in the toilet, until all of a sudden the same voices started to lavish praise on the “wartime” Rumsfeld, the wise man who would defeat terrorism (and Saddam Hussein) and bring peace to the land. We’re still fighting, 20 years later.

8 January 2000

Posted on January 8, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar leave Malaysia on a flight to Bangkok. It is the last time that the CIA “sees” the two. There is much written about the two: about the Malaysia meeting, about their visas, about intelligence not read, not passed on, and about mistakes in not recognizing their true purpose. It is worth a book in itself, but suffice it to say that the post-9/11 recriminations about the CIA not telling the FBI, and about the two not sharing information, is only a small piece of the multiple failures, ones that ultimately allowed everyone to say that domestic rules were to blame for the gigantic failure, rather than that the officers involved—and their bosses—just didn’t do their jobs, didn’t recognize the terrorists, didn’t understand the plotting, didn’t follow them into the United States, and didn’t, even a year later, see Mihdhar leaving the United States prior to 9/11 and then returning as a tourist in July 2001.

7 January 1995

Posted on January 7, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

The “Bojinka” set of plots in the Philippines are foiled, both an attack on the Pope and an assassination attempt against President Clinton, as well as preparations that involved airliners.

In the discovery of the plot, Philippine police discover Ramzi Yousef’s bomb-making lab and they arrest an accomplice, Abdul Hakim Murad, who is subsequently tortured by the Philippine authorities before being hand over to the FBI.

Captured materials revealed a plot to kill the Pope, to blow up U.S. and Israeli embassies in Manila, to destroy United Airlines aircraft flying Asian routes, and even to crash a plane into CIA HQ (surely the most obvious connection to 9/11). Murad also tells Philippine authorities details about Ramzi Yousef’s involvement in February 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and that he planted a bomb on a Philippines airliner in December 1994 that killed one and almost brought the airliner down.

6 January 1999

Posted on January 6, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

National Security Advisor “Sandy” Berger says President Clinton has expanded the rules of engagement (ROEs) for the no-fly zones over Iraq, allowing preemptive strikes on air defense and command and control targets that had previously exhibited hostile action against American overflights (on earlier flights, thus stretching the concept of “self defense”).

The no-fly zones, which had been imposed in 1991 after the first Gulf War, restricted Iraqi fighter jet (and later, attack helicopter) activity, essentially immobilizing (and deteriorating) the Iraqi air force. The scope of the no-fly zones would be expanded on numerous occasions and would even include “no-drive zones” in southern and northern Iraq that restricted offensive military action with armored vehicles.

The January 1999 expansion, compensating for the absence of on-the-ground UN inspectors and responding to increased Iraqi challenges to U.S. (and allied) overflights, really constitutes the beginning of the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war and the beginning of the end for Iraq. By March 2003, when the second Gulf War began, a clandestine operation called Operation Southern Focus built on the expanded 1999 ROEs and was weeks in the making, bombing Iraq and destroying Iraq’s command, communications, early warning and air defense capabilities while America was debating whether even to go to war. Southern Focus ultimately facilitated the invasion and the rapid defeat.

5 January 2000

Posted on January 5, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

The famous Malaysia meeting of “known” terrorists begins. Khalid al-Mihdhar, a Saudi national who was expected to be one of the 9/11 pilots, arrives in Kuala Lumpur from Dubai—going to Evergreen Park, a condominium complex 20 miles south of the city. There he is joined by Nawaf al-Hazmi, another Saudi (and another designated pilot); as well as by Walid bin Attash (“Khallad”), a bin Laden confidant.

The purpose of the meeting is still unclear, though the CIA was tipped off by Emirati intelligence that suspected terrorist al-Mihdhar was traveling via Dubai to an al Qaeda meeting. The Emiratis photograph his passport and provide it to U.S. intelligence—it contained a multiple-entry visa for the United States, something that no one seems to take note of until much later.

During the Kuala Lumpur meetings, Malaysian authorities provide surveillance and photographs of the participants. CIA officers in Malaysia write several contemporaneous reports over multiple days of an important al Qaeda meeting, and the meeting is prominent enough that FBI director Louis Freeh is personally briefed on February 6th. Somehow though, the FBI is never “formally” alerted as to Mihdhar’s American visa, and by the time the two (Mihdhar and Hazmi) fly from Malaysia to Thailand to Los Angeles, they are lost to U.S. intelligence, no one having thought of informing authorities to watchlist them.

Mihdhar and Hazmi would go on to San Diego a few days later and begin English-language and flight training. They would fail at both and were eventually converted into being “musclemen” aboard the hijacked airliners. There would be a last-minute flurry in August 2001 to locate the two.

4 January 2001

Posted on January 4, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

Mohammed Atta and Ziad Jarrah (the pilots who flew the 9/11 planes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center and crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania) both fly internationally on the same day (but separately), Atta leaving the United States for the first time since he arrived in June 2000.

Though Khalid Sheikh Mohammed discouraged external travel except for operational purposes, the two were so confident of their operational security that they both left the country soon after receiving their commercial pilot’s licenses.

Atta had overstayed his tourist visa by one month. He flew from Tampa to Madrid, returning on January 10, again gaining entry into the U.S.

Jarrah was already in Lebanon visiting his family. He flew Olympic Airlines from Beirut to Athens; and then from Athens to Dusseldorf, Germany. There he was met by Aysel Senguen, his common law wife, and the two flew from Dusseldorf to Newark, New Jersey, continuing on to Tampa. Senguen, a German national, left the United States on January 15, returning to Germany.

3 January 2000

Posted on January 3, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

The Navy destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG 68) makes a port call in Aden, Yemen, part of a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) military initiative to improve diplomatic relations with the Sana’a government under President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Not known until the USS Cole was attacked on October 12 in a subsequent port call was an unsuccessful attempt by al Qaeda to attack the ship on January 3. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, now held at Guantanamo Bay, was the local organizer behind the operation, probably masterminded by al Qaeda operative Walid bin Attash (“Khallad”), also a Yemeni. The small skiff loaded with explosives sank not far offshore as it was launched to attack the USS The Sullivans. Had the plot been discovered by U.S. intelligence, the foolish program to curry favor with the Saleh government probably would have been stopped, or at least greater force protection measures would have been applied to protect the USS Cole when it subsequently visited.

2 January 2001

Posted on January 2, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

The embassy of the Republic of the Niger in Rome is ransacked and thousands of passports and documents are stolen.

Many months later, a set of documents—on Niger government letterhead—would emerge to indicate attempts by Saddam Hussein to obtain uranium yellowcake from the country. The supposed Iraqi pursuit of Nigerien uranium is one of the key pieces of evidence used in “proving” Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of WMD. It is also at the core of the later Valerie Plame affair, where the CIA-dispatched Joseph Wilson (the former ambassador to Niger, and Plame’s husband) to investigate whether Iraq indeed was pursuing nuclear materials.

The documents are later conclusively proven to be forgeries.