Intelligence briefers meet with Vice President Cheney and tell him that the CIA has concluded that al Qaeda was responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000.
Just before the Clinton administration left office, the CIA Cole Task Force presented the team’s findings to the National Security Council, stating that their “preliminary judgment” was that al Qaeda “supported the attack” on the Cole. The CIA said that it had “no definitive answer on [the] crucial question of outside direction of the attack—how and by whom. The CIA noted that the Yemeni government claimed that the perpetrators were not tied to al Qaeda.
President Clinton said the report was not conclusive enough to go to war or deliver an ultimatum to the Taliban threatening war. Richard Clarke believed that the CIA and FBI were actually “holding back” evidence because neither CIA director Tenet nor Attorney General Janet Reno thought that the White House wanted to be put into a position of conducting any military strikes so close to the change in administrations.
As a result of the conclusion of the USS Cole task force, CIA director George Tenet directs the Counterterrorist Center form a strategic analysis group to do better forecasting and provide an overview for the voluminous threat reporting that is now flooding into U.S. intelligence.

Hani Hanjour, the hijacker pilot would fly American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon begins Boeing large airplane simulator training in Arizona. The Saudi is the most experienced of the three pilots, having received his commercial airline license in 1999. But he evidently could not get a job with any airline.
After the 9/11 attacks, much was written, based on FBI leaks and inquiries with the various flight schools where the hijackers trained, about how poor the flying skills of the four were, particularly of Hanjour, who even Mohammed Atta doubted. These types of stories – that they were bad pilots or bad Muslims – seem in hindsight to be foolish and short sighted. Their piloting skills were obviously good enough to fly their aircraft into their targets – Hanjour being the most skillful when one considers how low he had to fly to plow into the Pentagon building at virtual ground level. And as for questioning their faith or dehumanizing the hijackers, it seems foolish in terms of understanding their extreme motivations that carried them to the attacks.

CIA director George Tenet testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the “Worldwide Threat 2001: National Security in a Changing World,” addressing terrorism.
“The threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving,” he says. “State sponsored terrorism appears to have declined over the past five years, but transnational groups—with decentralized leadership that makes them harder to identify and disrupt—are emerging. We are seeing fewer centrally controlled operations, and more acts initiated and executed at lower levels.
“Terrorists are also becoming more operationally adept and more technically sophisticated in order to defeat counterterrorism measures. For example, as we have increased security around government and military facilities, terrorists are seeking out ‘softer’ targets that provide opportunities for mass casualties.
“… Usama bin Ladin [sic] and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat. Since 1998, Bin Ladin has declared all US citizens legitimate targets of attack. As shown by the bombing of our Embassies in Africa in 1998 and his Millennium plots last year, he is capable of planning multiple attacks with little or no warning.
“His organization is continuing to place emphasis on developing surrogates to carry out attacks in an effort to avoid detection, blame, and retaliation. As a result it is often difficult to attribute terrorist incidents to his group, Al Qa’ida.
“The Taliban shows no sign of relinquishing terrorist Usama Bin Ladin, despite strengthened UN sanctions and prospects that Bin Ladin’s terrorist operations could lead to retaliatory strikes against Afghanistan. The Taliban and Bin Ladin have a symbiotic relationship—Bin Ladin gets safe haven and in return, he gives the Taliban help in fighting its civil war.”

The new President George W. Bush signs a letter to Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf seeking more help from Islamabad in the CIA’s efforts to go after the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. By Bush’s inaugural, the CIA has multiple covert actions underway to spy on, capture, or kill bin Laden. To be successful, the Agency thought, it needed more cooperation from Pakistan, both as a staging base for operations and a source of intelligence.
National security advisor Condoleezza Rice is particularly keen on build a “regional” strategy that includes Pakistan in dealing with the Taliban and al Qaeda, and generally skeptical of the existing covert actions. Articulations of her regional strategy meander through the NSC and the interagency process throughout the spring and summer of 2001, a more comprehensive program to be sure in isolating the Taliban and pressuring bin Laden but lacking any urgency. The strategy document is literally circulating in final draft when the 9/11 attacks came.

There is an assassination attempt on Osama bin Laden, while he is living in Khartoum, Sudan. Bin Laden believes it is Egyptian intelligence; the CIA believes it is the Saudis. (Looming Tower, p. 192) Though U.S. intelligence is barely registering bin Laden’s importance, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia had taken notice of Bin Laden’s post Afghanistan life in Sudan, the scale of his enterprises, and the growing reach of al Qaeda.
By this time, bin Laden is also cooperating with Ayman Zawahiri and in contact with other Egyptian jihadis. At the end of December, a terrorist attack, claimed by Zawahiri’s group, attacked a tourist bus in old Cairo, injuring eight Austrians and eight Egyptians. A few days after the assassination attempt, terrorists in Egypt attack a bus carrying Romanian tourists and then a Nile cruise boat. There are a half dozen attacks on tourists in Egypt in February. Bin Laden had also been involved in a debate with the Egyptian jihadists in al Qaeda who wanted to attack the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden objected, not wanting to provoke a more forceful crackdown on dissidents in the country.
It is most likely that the Saudis conducted (or sponsored) the attempt on bin Laden’s life. It would be the beginning of the end for his sojourn in Sudan. In March or April, King Fahd revoked bin Laden’s citizenship as punishment for his “irresponsible behavior that contradicts the interests of Saudi Arabia and harms sisterly countries.” (Intelligence Matters, p. 30) Egypt had complained to the Saudis and the Sudanese government, and both Algeria and Yemen complained to the the Saudis to put a stop to bin Laden and his support for insurgencies in their countries.

Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi travel to San Diego from Los Angeles. Though Omar Bayoumi is assumed to drive them, the 9/11 Commission reports (p. 218) states that the two were driven by Mohdar Abdullah, a Yemeni university student in his early 20s.
The two sign a four-month lease at Parkwood Apartments (Apartment #150) on 6401 Mount Ada Road, the same apartment complex where Bayoumi lives. Bayoumi held them to fill out the lease application and reportedly pays the deposit and the first month’s rent, also co-signing the lease, because the two had not opened a bank account and the manager would not take cash. (Mihdhar later opens a Bank of America account in San Diego with $9,900.)
Shortly after moving in, Bayoumi throws a party for the two to introduce the two to the Arab community in San Diego.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed later tells U.S. intelligence that it was his idea that the two should reside in San Diego, far from the region where the operation would take place, and also a community with a significant Saudi Muslim population. He tells the two to enroll in an English language course and then, once their English is satisfactory, to enroll in a flight school. He says that he was worried that Hazmi’s English (and aptitude) was so weak that he would not be able to train as a pilot. But Osama bin Laden had personally selected the two (who would both go on to be “muscle men” on the flight that attacked the Pentagon.

A South African citizen Istiaque Parker contacts the U.S. embassy in Islamabad with information about Ramzi Yousef’s whereabouts. Parker, a jihadi, is acquainted with Yousef had visited him at the Peral Guest House two weeks earlier to discusses a scheme to kidnap the Philippine ambassador to Pakistan, a scheme that was to have secured the release of Hakim Murad, who had been captured in the Philippines. Other reports say that Parker was to check luggage onto international flights with bombs in them.
Parker is motivated by the $2 million reward being offered for information leading to the apprehension of the 1993 World Trade Center bomber. Parker disappears with his wife Fehmida and their infant son days later – taken into witness protection by the FBI – as Yousef was apprehended four days later.
On September 5, 1996, Yousef was convicted for his role in the so-called “Bojinka” plot in the Philippines and sentenced to life in prison without parole. On November 12, 1997, Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing and was subsequently also convicted of seditious conspiracy. He was remanded to the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, where he still serves.

A Scheme to kill Osama bin Laden at a remote “falcon hunting camp” in the desert in southern Afghanistan is hatched, when the camp is identified by satellite imagery. The camp is used by members of the United Arab Emirates royal family and other high-level officials, who also quietly pledge to assist in U.S. efforts to kill the al Qaeda head.
On February 10, as the United States considered striking the camp because it believed bin Laden was present, imagery identified another group – “high level UAE officials” the 9/11 Commission report would subsequently say, also present. The scheme is called off.

While eating at a halal restaurant in Culver City a few blocks away from the King Fahd mosque, would be 9/11 pilots Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi (who arrived in Los Angeles on January 15) meet Omar Bayoumi, a Saudi government intelligence operative.
His identity as such is obvious, but even in partially “declassifying” the famous missing “28 pages” from the still partially redacted 2002 Congressional Joint Inquiry, the Obama administration in July 2016, kept this supposition secret. On Bayoumi, the pages state: “The FBI has received numerous reports from individuals in the Muslim community, dating back to 1999, alleging that al-Bayoumi may be a Saudi intelligence officer.” It goes on to state that Bayoumi’s “encounter with the hijackers may not have been accidental.” The pages go on to say that a review of “telephone toll records” by the FBI showed that Bayoumi “called Saudi Government establishments in the United States almost 100 times between January and May of 2000.”
This Saudi connection to sponsoring terrorism, and then specifically, why the 9/11 hijackers had contact with these Saudi government officials while they were in the U.S., remains something that the United States government is still elliptical about. But the reality is clear. Bayoumi was sent to Los Angeles to lure (or facilitate) Mihdhar and Hazmi’s move to San Diego and smooth their way in getting settled in the United States.