25 December 1979

Posted on December 25, 2020January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

Over a three-day period, beginning near midnight on Christmas Eve, four Soviet Army motorized rifle divisions invade Afghanistan as Soviet special forces seize airports in Kabul. The communist, exiled leader Babrak Karmal is installed as president.

It is the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union, but also the birth of a new brand of Islamic fundamentalism not based on animus towards Israel. Over the next decade of fighting—devastating to Afghanistan and to Afghan fighters—al Qaeda is born. The CIA’s decade-long, covert-action support for the war against the Soviets reportedly involves billions in arms and support, much of it funneled through Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The Arab migration to the fight—the holy jihad supported by a young Osama bin Laden—does not really get underway for another five years, but then thousands of volunteers make the holy pilgrimage to Afghanistan to fight the foreign invader, some joining al Qaeda as it later forms (in 1988) and some just jihadi tourists who return to their home countries of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

24 December 1999

Posted on December 24, 2020January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

NSA reportedly begins placing caveats on certain raw Osama bin Ladin intercepts that precludes automatic sharing of the contents with the FBI or U.S. Attorneys.

These controls over dissemination were initially created at the direction of Attorney General Janet Reno, and applied solely to intelligence gathered as a result of three specific domestic-related intercepts that she had authorized. Because NSA decided it was administratively too difficult to determine whether particular intelligence derived from these specific surveillances was contained in finished reports, the NSA also decided to control dissemination of all its bin Laden related reports.

In November 2000, in response to direction from the FISA Court, NSA modified these caveats to require that NSA’s Customer Needs and Delivery Services group could make exceptions to share the resulting intelligence with prosecutors and FBI agents. This episode is often confused with the larger question of FBI and CIA sharing—the so-called “wall”—but really it’s related to intelligence from three al Qaeda suspect intercepts.

23 December 1998

Posted on December 23, 2020January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

Osama bin Laden meets with a Time Magazine correspondent at his tented encampment in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

“Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so,” he says, referring to nuclear weapons.

George Tenet later testifies before the 9/11 Commission that that the CIA took notice of this December statement and sent out a warning regarding al Qaeda’s interest “in acquiring chemical and biological weapons and nuclear materials.”

22 December 1989

Posted on December 22, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Osama bin Laden approaches Prince Turki bin Faisal al Saud, head of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, with a plan to use Arab mujahedin from Afghanistan to overthrow the Marxist government in South Yemen.

Turki rejects his proposal, but bin Laden reportedly organizes fighters anyhow under the al Qaeda flag, and then (working with tribal leaders) makes a series of attacks in South Yemen. The attacks are so damaging and threatening that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh travels to Saudi Arabia to ask King Fahd to get bin Laden under control. The King then himself instructs bin Laden to stay out of Yemeni affairs, and Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz al Saud (then the minister of the interior) demands bin Laden’s passport.

Less than a year later, Iraq invades Kuwait and bin Laden’s views of Saudi Arabia are forever transformed, with King Fahd inviting U.S. military forces to deploy to Saudi soil—a sacrilege to bin Laden that represents a new set of “crusaders” entering the lands of Islam.

21 December 1988

Posted on December 21, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Pan Am Flight 10 is bombed mid-air and crashes into Lockerbie, Scotland

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.

20 December 2000

Posted on December 20, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

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.

19 December 2000

Posted on December 19, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

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.

18 December 1986

Posted on December 18, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

McNair Hall at North Carolina A&T State University

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.

17 December 1998

Posted on December 17, 2020December 19, 2020 by William Arkin

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.

16 December 1994

Posted on December 16, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

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.”