Author: William Arkin

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.

1 December 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The social media era hits the CIA, early. The Washington Post reports that the Agency fired four employees, disciplined at least 10 others and revoked the security clearances of nine contractors for exchanging “inappropriate” messages in Agency computer chat rooms. The disciplinary action is described as the largest in the agency’s history.

The Agency had created internal intranet portals for collaboration, including internal chat capabilities, and Agency employees started communicating internally from inside the network. Evidently the “inappropriate” messages—hidden from management—both included gossip as well as sexual comment and inuendo. With the incident, the Agency tightened up rules but the technologies changed faster than the enforcers could keep up.

And all that new-found collaboration? Agency veterans say that the demands of email and collaboration programs can be oppressive—just keeping up—focusing operators and analysts alike on administrative tasks and internal bureaucracy rather than the external mission. It is a problem that persists to this day—and obviously not just in government.

30 November 1999

Posted on by William Arkin
Abu Zubaydah

 

The so-called “Millennium Plot” is first detected, leading to the arrest of numerous plotters in Amman, Jordan. Jordanian intelligence uncovered the al Qaeda plot to attack the Radisson Hotel as well as other sites on the night of December 31/January 1, linking local extremists to Abu Zubaydah, an al Qaeda operative then-considered to be Osama bin Laden’s top terrorist planner.

When Zubaydah was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002 (and severely injured in a fire fight), he was characterized as “chief of operations” for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s “number three” with the assumption that he was the main 9/11 planner. He wasn’t of course—that was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But he would go on to be the first captive to be water boarded and tortured at CIA black sites.

As an interesting aside: after 9/11, many would report that Abu Zubaydah made a mistake and said in an intercepted telephone call that “the grooms are ready for the big wedding,” a tip-off which U.S. intelligence had already determined was a reference to an attack. (The Cell, p. 214) The 9/11 Commission reported, though, that Zubaydah actually said “the time for training is over.” (9/11 Commission, pp. 174–175).

Somehow then—and even now—terrorism experts think it is effective to stress that al Qaeda operatives make mistakes, or they don’t understand Islam, or were “failures”—such as that the Hamburg Three did poorly in pilot training—to delegitimize when none of those things seem to make a bit of difference in their ability and willingness to continue to attack. Nor do they dissuade others from joining their ranks.

29 November 1999

Posted on by William Arkin
Khalden terrorist training camp

 

Mohammed Atta travels from Hamburg, Germany to Karachi, Pakistan via Istanbul, spending the night in Turkey. Despite the African embassy bombings in August 1998, American military retaliation, and CIA covert operations, he and his compatriots have no trouble reaching Afghanistan.

Atta is already the leader of the Hamburg Four, and together with Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Ramzi Binalshibh, they travel to Kandahar and then on to Khalden camp, where they meet with the al Qaeda operational commander Abu Hafs (Mohammed Atef) and Osama bin Laden. Abu Hafs spotted them immediately as special, according to various accounts, especially the three who would go on to pilot the 9/11 planes (Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah). They were educated, had technical skills, could speak English, and had learned how to live in the West. They also came from countries—Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates—where they wouldn’t have trouble obtaining U.S. visas. By the time they leave Afghanistan, they have their broad assignments.

28 November 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The Washington Post reports that the CIA has launched its largest recruiting campaign since the Cold War, looking for linguists in Arabic, Farsi, Korean, Chinese and other languages increasingly in demand given the “proliferating new dangers” of the post-bipolar world.

“To increase the effectiveness of its campus recruiting, the CIA has narrowed its focus to 66 colleges and universities with which it either has—or hopes to develop—close recruiting ties. The list includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Cornell, Maryland, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Howard, Grambling, Brigham Young, Texas A&M, Texas, Michigan, Ohio State, Purdue, Stanford and Berkeley.”

The exercise would be a bust for three reasons: One, that “native” speakers and people of color were often also turned away from the Agency because they could not get security clearances or were not the “type” of person that fit with the lily-white Agency. Second, the personnel and promotion systems of the Agency often mis-utilized skilled linguists, relegating them to translation and administrative tasks rather than prestigious case officers. And three, the emergence of machine translation, which seemed to suggest that the old, large pools of Russian linguists were no longer really needed.

In any case, the “high-demand/low-density” languages have never been fully subscribed and by 9/11, there were only a few dozen Arabic speakers focused on counter-terrorism and very few actually running the “war” against bin Laden.

27 November 1993

Posted on by William Arkin
Haynes R. Mahoney

 

An American diplomat, on his way to a Thanksgiving reception, is kidnapped in Yemen, the first known kidnapping of a diplomat in Yemen. Reporting on the kidnapping describes “the country south of Saudi Arabia” as “faction ridden” and ascribed the hostage taking to “a squabble between competing factions.” The press reported that “conservative” North Yemen and formerly Marxist South Yemen united to create the latest version of the country. Interior ministry officials said the diplomat—Haynes R. Mahoney—had been taken to Marib, which the news media described as “oil rich,” its only seeming geopolitical frame of reference.

“There has been little activity in Yemen by radical Muslim fundamentalist groups that might strike at American targets in response to President Clinton’s meeting on Wednesday with the novelist Salman Rushdie,” the New York Times said, the narcissistic frame of reference virtually oblivious to the emergence of radical Islam.

26 November 1996

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Saudi citizen Hani Hanjour, who would go on to pilot the plane that attacked the Pentagon, departs the United States for Saudi Arabia. He had been living in Scottsdale, Arizona and attending flight training, where he was hoping to become a commercial airline pilot.

Hanjour was the only one of the four 9/11 hijackers who had been to the United States prior to June 2000. He lived in the U.S. in October 1991 and enrolled in English language school in Tucson. He then returned in 1996, arriving in New York on April 2, living for a month in Florida before moving to Oakland, California, where he attended English language school at the ELS Language Center at Holy Names College (3510 Mountain Boulevard in Oakland, CA) from May until August 1996.

Though the 9/11 plot didn’t begin until much later—and Hanjour was the last of the pilots to join the group—his earlier residence and travel in the United States (and his attending flight school) never attracted the attention of any authorities or the intelligence community, such was the blind trust given over to Saudi citizens.