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.

30 December 1995

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

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind 9/11, is identified by an al Qaeda captive from a photograph and labeled an “associate” of Osama bin Laden.

He is subsequently indicted by a federal grand jury the next month. The FBI and U.S. Attorney do not really know who KSM is, other than as a financier of the 1993 World Trade Center attack and an accomplice in Ramzi Yousef’s activities in the Philippines. The indictment is sealed—secret—only to be opened once KSM is in custody.

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.”

11 December 1994

Posted on December 11, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s first international terrorist act is probably carried out when a bomb goes off on a Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Tokyo, via Mactan–Cebu International Airport. The small bomb is built and planted by Ramzi Yousef, the attacker of the World Trade Center in February 1993.

With false identification papers (he is an internationally-wanted man), Ramzi Yousef boards the flight in Manila. Onboard, sitting in seat 26K, he assembles a small bomb using nitrocellulose explosive that he secreted away in a contact lens cleaner bottle, with a Casio watch as the timer and initiator. He then puts the bomb in the life jacket pouch underneath the seat. When the plane lands in Cebu, Yousef debarks, and Japanese businessman Haruki Ikegami boards the flight and takes his seat. At cruising altitude over the Sea of Japan, the Casio alarm ignites the filament in the bomb and it detonates, killing Ikegami and blowing a hole in the fuselage. The pilot manages to bring the flight down for an emergency landing.

Though most histories credit Yousef with masterminding the plot, new information indicates that the attack on Philippine Airlines flight 434 (a Boeing 747-200 jumbo jet) was conceived and directed by KSM. The 9/11 planes operation then evolves from bombs planted on planes so that they would explode over water to using the planes themselves as missiles to strike objects on land.

12 November 1994

Posted on November 12, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Wandering around the globe, oblivious to everything terrorism and Islam going on around him, Bill Clinton lands in the Philippines on a two-day state visit, visiting Corregidor, site of the Japanese victory in the conquest of the American commonwealth in World War II, and of the U.S. Army’s return.

While in the Philippines, what are now believed to be al Qaeda operatives (including Ramzi Yousef) undertake surveillance of the presidential party, preparing for an assassination attempt on Clinton’s life. The 911 Commission says that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sent $3,000 to Yousef to fund the plot.

According to Triple Cross (p. 163), Yousef and associate Wali Khan Amin Shah applied for visas on November 3 and travel to Manila (Khan would later be captured and tortured by Philippine police and then “rendered” to the United States). Triple Cross claims that Terry Nichols, accomplice in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was also in the Philippines at the same time.

Clinton arrived in the country after a visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met with King Fahd at King Khalid Military City in Hafr-Al-Batin in the north, near the Iraqi border. “I had been impressed by Fahd’s call, in early 1993, asking me to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims,” Clinton later writes (My Life, p. 627).

It was hardly a humanitarian move on the Saudi part. Bosnia would be one of the first locations outside Afghanistan where radical Islamists and al Qaeda adherents would travel to and carry out jihad, and Osama bin Laden certainly saw the slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia as part of the global assault on the Islamic people.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the Taliban have their first significant military success, capturing Kandahar in the south. It all happened in November 1994, all the threads gathering, but the global pattern was unseen at the time.