A “Town Hall” meeting is held at Ohio State University on Iraq, attended by an all-star cast from the Clinton administration: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. The intent is to rally support for action against Saddam Hussein, the three arguing that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had used them. The three surprisingly are met by jeers and catcalls, completely disrupting the event. The Clinton administration gets a vivid message that the U.S. public opposes deeper military engagement against Saddam.
In his prepared remarks, Cohen says: “Saddam Hussein has developed an arsenal of deadly chemical and biological weapons. He has used these weapons repeatedly against his own people as well as Iran. I have a picture which I believe CNN can show on its cameras, but here’s a picture taken of an Iraqi mother and child killed by Iraqi nerve gas. This is what I would call Madonna and child Saddam Hussein-style.”
Berger says that “in the 21st century, the community of nations may see more and more of this very kind of threat that Iraq poses now, a rogue state with biological and chemical weapons.”
The “record will show that Saddam Hussein has produced weapons of mass destruction,” Albright stated, “which he’s clearly not collecting for his own personal pleasure, but in order to use.” She continues: “Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.”
The event takes place four years before the Bush administration seeks military action against Saddam Hussein for still possessing WMD, and after U.N. inspectors had been ejected from the country. Yes, the intelligence community completely failed in accurately assessing Iraq’s actual capabilities and arsenal, but the idea that the Bush administration invented WMD as a pretext for war is completely wrong.

German intelligence intercepts a telephone call in Hamburg, eavesdropping on Mohammed Haydar Zammar’s communications. Zammar is a Syrian born German citizen and is believed by German authorities to be a recruiter for al Qaeda and other Islamic radical groups.
In this call, Zammar reportedly said he was going to a meeting on Marienstrasse with “Mohammed, Ramzi and Said.” This refers to Mohammed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh and Said Bahaji, an extremist also under investigation. Atta became friends with Zammar year earlier, and Zammar would later boast that he personally recruited Atta into al Qaeda.
German police check the address and confirm the names, but take no other actions, according to a post-9/11 investigation by Der Spiegel.

President Bush on his first foreign trip meets with President Fox in San Cristobal, Mexico, is completely surprised when the United States carries out airstrikes in Iraq.
In the “first airstrikes” of the Bush administration, 24 U.S. and U.K. aircraft strike Iraqi targets near Baghdad in one of the largest “response options” since Desert Fox. The Bush White House is completely unaware of the pre-planned operation or the rules of engagement that precipitated the attacks. The attacks take place outside the no-fly zones.
Queried by the White House, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is livid because he feels he hadn’t been given enough information about the strikes. “I’m the secretary of defense. I’m in the chain of command,” Rumsfeld complains, later taking permission to grant such strikes away from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Gen. Hugh Shelton) and placing it under his authority.
CNN reports that it looked for a moment if the U.S. had just declared unilateral war on Iraq, and for Iraq, the shift on air strikes in response to Iraq’s firing on no-fly zone patrol aircraft had already started. First, the ROE’s had changed to allow aircraft to “retaliate” not in direct response to missile and anti-aircraft artillery firings but to “bank” such responses, to attack later. And second, targeters were allowed to choose Iraqi air defense and command and control targets of the integrated air defense system (and not just the locations where Iraqi attacks originated from).
On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly tells his listeners, “You know, I don’t take Saddam Hussein all that seriously anymore as far as a world threat. Maybe I’m wrong and naive here. Should we be very frightened of this guy?”
President Bush, upon recovering from his surprise and anger, eventually says that the purpose of the strikes were: “to send a clear signal to Saddam.”

Abdullah Ocalan, head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is arrested in Kenya and forcibly returned to Turkey. Ocalan had sought refuge in the Greek embassy in Nairobi and is kidnapped by Turkish intelligence, reportedly with the help of the CIA. On February 9, 2000, the PKK announced a formal halt to its war against Ankara and adopted a new name, Kongra-Gel, reelecting the still imprisoned Abdullah Ocalan as its leader.

Ayatollah Khomeini sentences author Salman Rushdie to death for publishing The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims consider insulting to the Prophet Muhammed. A few weeks later, Iran severs relations with the UK when the latter refuses to denounce Rushdie.
On July 3, 1991, the Italian translator of Salman Rushdie’s book, “The Satanic Verses,” is stabbed and beaten by a man believed to be Iranian in Milan, Italy.

CIA director George Tenet briefs National Security Advisor Sandy Berger on what Tenet writes is the “first of what would become several plans to try to capture bin Laden.”
The plan briefed is to work with a group of “tribals” in southern Afghanistan, Pashtun groups opposing both the Taliban and willing to work for the CIA. The tribals would attack Tarnak Farm outside Kandahar, bin Laden’s main residence, kidnap bin Ladin and take him to a desert landing zone. From there, a CIA plane would take him either to New York or an Arab capital, or wherever he was to be arraigned. Despite many possibilities of these going wrong, the briefing says that “sooner or later, nin Ladin will attack U.S. interests, perhaps using WMD [weapons of mass destruction].”
The CIA is direction to continue to move ahead with the planning and, among other things, to start drafting any legal documents that might be required to authorize the covert action. (9/11 Commission Report, p. 112.)

Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna is killed near his office in Cairo by Egyptian government security service agents. The Brotherhood becomes the most important “radical” Islamic organization until it is eclipsed by groups created as a result of its suppression, and by Saudi support, either in response to continued colonial occupation of the Middle East, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iranian revolution, when Tehran also begins to fund its own groups.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is active during the anti-British riots and the end of British rule. After Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seized absolute power in 1954, he suspends the constitution, disbands parliament, and abolishes political parties, eventually repressing and then banning the Brotherhood after it opposed government policies. Hundreds of Muslim Brothers are imprisoned and tortured, and thousands flee to other Arab countries (where they establish additional organizations). Saudi Arabia also funds the Muslim Brotherhood (and these additional organizations), opposing Nasser’s secularism and socialism.
In prison under Nasser, the Egyptian intellectual Sayyid Qutb writes his most famous book Malim if al-Tariq (Milestones), published in April 1964, much of the basis for al Qaeda and a book that influences the thinking of Mohammed Atta – the only Egyptian amongst the nineteen 9/11 plotters (see April 25). In 1990, as a student, Atta joins the Engineers Syndicate, which is one of three professional associations controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Osama bin Laden begins to invest in Sudan, buying numerous properties and businesses. The Saudi Binladin Group receives a contract to build an airport in Port Sudan. In October 1990, Osama bin Laden reportedly first visited Khartoum, a year after the coup d’etat by the National Islamic Front (NIF).
Soon after Desert Storm, bin Laden leaves Saudi Arabia for Sudan, and according to George Tenet, “the Saudis were thrilled …” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 101) Hassan al-Turabi, the spiritual leader of the NIF, hosts the first Popular Arab Islamic Conference in Sudan in April 1991. The conference provides a forum for disparate forces in the Middle East who oppose American presence in the region to come together. Bin Laden attends, as do leaders from Hizballah, and representatives from various Iraqi and Iranian groups.

The CIA’s Senior Executive Intelligence Brief (SEIB) contains a Top Secret article: “Bin Ladin’s Interest in Biological, Radiological Weapons” summarizing intelligence since Osama bin Laden’s May 1998 “Nuclear Bomb of Islam” fatwa, where he stated that “it is the duty of the Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God.”
The intelligence on Al Qaeda’s interest in WMD started to flow with the detection of Jamal al-Fadl, who spoke of efforts to acquire nuclear materials and of manufacturing of chemical and biological weapons (Fadl’s false testimony leads to the attack on the al Shifa plant in Sudan in 1998, where al Qaeda was supposedly working on VX nerve gas.)
Later there are reports of al Qaeda attempts to purchase loose nukes, chemical and biological weapons from arms dealers, as well as laboratories in Afghanistan that are engaged in manufacturing WMD. There are elliptical reports of al Qaeda seeking access to small crop-dusting planes to deliver WMD inside the United States.

Ramzi Yousef is removed from Pakistan in an “extraordinary rendition.” After being forcibly capture in Islamabad on the night of February 7 by a combination of State Department Diplomatic Security agents and Pakistani officers, the FBI negotiates his removal over two intense days with the Pakistani government. The FBI quietly borrows a corporate jet from a still unknown CEO to return the leader of the 1993 World Trade Center attack to the United States to stand trial. The jet lands at Stewart Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York.
Urban legend is that Yousef is flown over New York City and that an FBI agent onboard mocks him, saying “You see the Trade Centers down there, they’re still standing, aren’t they?” Yousef supposedly responds, “They wouldn’t be if I had enough money and enough explosives.”