In Boston, meanwhile, solemn ritual had been under way behind the door of Room 241 of the Days Inn on Soldiers Field Road. It was the ritual called for in the hijackers’ “spiritual manual,” copies of which were to be recovered in Atta’s baggage, Hamzi’s car, and—a partial copy—in the wreckage in Pennsylvania.
A maid admitted to clean the room “noticed large amounts of water and body hair on the floor … all body lotion provided for the room had been used.… Room occupants [had] slept on top of the bed sheets and placed light silk cloth over the pillows.” In the final hours, there was also a great deal of praying to be done.
Pray, remain awake, renew “the mutual pledge to die,” think about God’s blessing—“especially for the martyrs.” Spit on the suitcase, the clothing—the knife. Then, moving through the phases as instructed, prayers on the way to the airport, avoiding any sign of confusion at the airport. Prayers and more prayers.
“Smile in the face of death, young man, for you will soon enter the eternal abode.” Ramzi Binalshibh was to say that, shortly before the end, Atta told him with assurance that their next meeting would be, “God willing, in Paradise.” Binalshibh responded with a request to Atta. “I asked him [that] if he was to see the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon Him, and reach the highest place in Heaven, he should convey our salaam to Him.”
Atta promised he would do so, then shared something his comrade Marwan al-Shehhi had told him:
“Marwan had a beautiful dream, that he was flying high in the sky surrounded by green birds not from our world, that he was crashing into things, and that he felt so happy.”
Green birds. In a passage in the Qur’an, it is said that in Paradise people “will wear green garments of fine silk.” Green is said to have been the Prophet Mohammed’s favorite color. During the Crusades, to distinguish themselves from the Christians, Arab soldiers wore green into battle.
SEPTEMBER 11,
the way Ramzi Binalshibh would remember that morning:
When the news started and we heard the news of the collision of the first aircraft, as it was wrecking the World Trade Center, guided by our brother Mohamed Atta—may Allah have mercy on his soul—the brothers shouted “Takbir!”—“Allah is Greatest!” … And they prostrated themselves to Allah in gratitude and they wept.
The brothers thought that this was the one and only part of the operation, so we said to them, “Patience, patience!” And suddenly our brother Marwan was wrecking the southern tower of the World Trade Center in a very fierce manner. I mean, in an unimaginable way we were witnessing live on air. We were saying, “Oh, Allah, show us the right way, show the right way” … So the brothers prostrated themselves in thanks to Allah … and they sometimes wept for joy and at other times from sadness for their brothers.…
They thought it was over. We said to them, “Follow the news. The matter is not over yet. Make prayers for your brothers. Pray for them …” Imagine! Within forty-five minutes, in the space of this record time, the [third] aircraft was wrecking the Pentagon building, the building of the American Defense Ministry. The aircraft was guided by our brother Hani Hanjour.… The joy was tremendous.…
Then came the news of the aircraft which was flown by our brother Ziad Jarrah, which was downed in the suburbs of the capital, Washington. At this the brothers shouted “Allah is Greatest!” and they prostrated themselves and embraced.…
It was a sign from Allah for the whole world to see.… Allah the Almighty says: “Did they not travel through the earth and see the end of those before them who did evil. Allah brought utter destruction on them, and similar fates await those who reject Allah.” [Qur’an, Surah 47, Verse 10]. The divine intervention was without a doubt very clear and palpable.… Praise and gratitude be to Allah!
The blessed day of Tuesday, 11 September in Washington and New York was one of the glorious days of the Muslims … it represents a calamitous defeat for the greatest power on earth, America … a fatal blow in her heart, which is filled with animosity and hatred for Islam.… Allah the Almighty has decided to inflict upon her a punishment—to be executed by the hands of this group of believing mujahideen, whom Allah has chosen and ordained for this mighty task. Praise and glory be to Him!
PART VII
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
THIRTY
THE STORY OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001—THAT OF THE VICTIMS AND OF the terrorists—is told. The identity of the perpetrators is not in doubt. As told in these pages, the essential elements are as described in the conclusions of the two official inquiries.
There are two areas, though, on which the 9/11 Commission fudged or dodged the issue: the full truth about U.S. and Western intelligence before the attacks; and whether the terrorist operation ten years ago had the support of other nation-states or of powerful individuals within those nation-states. There remain multiple and serious questions and yawning gaps in our knowledge of which the public knows little or nothing.
A case in point, one that we include because it is not covered at all in the Commission Report—and because our interviews indicate that there may possibly be some substance to it—is a report that surfaced seven weeks after the attacks in the leading French newspaper Le Figaro. It was carried by major news agencies and newspapers, denied by the CIA, then forgotten. If the Le Figaro story was correct, U.S. intelligence officials had had a face-to-face meeting with Osama bin Laden in early July 2001, sitting down with a deadly foe, a man wanted for the mass murder of Americans.
According to the report, bin Laden that month traveled secretly from Pakistan to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, a destination that until 9/11 remained relatively friendly territory for him. He spent several days there reportedly, in private accommodations at the prestigious American Hospital. The ostensible reason for the visit was to undergo medical tests related to his kidney function, long said to have caused him problems. Such tests may have been conducted, but the claim is that he also agreed to meet with a locally based CIA agent and—reportedly—a second official sent in from Washington.
The reporter who originated the story, Alexandra Richard, told the authors that she happened on the story during a visit to the Gulf weeks before 9/11. Checks she made in Dubai, with a senior administrator at the American Hospital, with an airport operative at the point of origin of bin Laden’s alleged journey—Quetta in Pakistan—and with a diplomatic contact she consulted, convinced her that the episode did occur.
The then–head of urology at the hospital, Dr. Terry Callaway, declined to respond to reporter Richard’s questions. Hospital director Bernard Koval was reported as having flatly denied the story.
The authors, however, spoke with Richard’s original source, who said he spoke from firsthand knowledge. The source said he had been present when the local CIA officer involved in the meeting—who, the witnesses interviewed have said, went by the name Larry Mitchell—spoke of the bin Laden visit while out for a social evening with friends. That a professional could have been so loose-lipped seems extraordinary, if not entirely unlikely. It remains conceivable, though, that the bin Laden visit to Dubai did occur. A second kidney specialist, an official source told the authors, described the visit independently, in detail, and at the time. The specialist was able to do so because he, too, was flown to Dubai to contribute to bin Laden’s treatment.
Seeming corroboration of the CIA–bin Laden meeting, meanwhile, came to the authors in a 2009 interview with the official who headed the Security Intelligence department of France’s DGSE, Alain Chouet, who is cited elsewhere in this book.
Did Chouet credit the account of the contact in Dubai? He replied, “Yes.”
Did the DGSE have knowledge at the time that CIA officers met with bin Laden? “Yes,” Chouet said. “Before 9/11,” Chouet observed. “It was not a scoop for us—we weren’t surprised [to learn of it]. We did not consider it something abnormal or outrageous. When someone is threatening you, you try to negotiate. Our own service does it all the time. It is the sort of thing we are paid to
do.”
The Dubai episode, Chouet noted, would have occurred “at the time of the Berlin negotiations—through interested parties—between the U.S. and the Taliban. The U.S. was trying to send messages to the Taliban. We didn’t know whether [the meeting with bin Laden] was to threaten or to make a deal.”
There were contacts with the Taliban through intermediaries that July, the latest stage in a long series of approaches. At initial meetings in Europe organized by the United Nations, American emissaries—not speaking officially for the U.S. government—had suggested the possibility of improved relations, cooperation on a strategically important oil pipeline project, and long-term assistance. They had also urged the Taliban to hand over bin Laden.
According to the Le Figaro report, the Dubai contact between bin Laden and U.S. intelligence occurred between July 4 and 14. The final contact, DGSE’s Chouet believes, was on the 13th. According to Chouet, the United States had a twofold approach. At the discussions in Germany, negotiators would both attempt to cool down relations between Washington and the Taliban and ask for the handover of bin Laden. The contact in Dubai, Chouet surmises, was arranged through Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief, Prince Turki—whose agency had handled bin Laden during the anti-Soviet war in the 1980s.
The hope, Chouet said, was to persuade bin Laden “not to oppose the negotiations in Berlin, and above all to leave Afghanistan and return to Saudi Arabia with a royal pardon—under Turki’s guarantee and control. In exchange, the U.S. would drop efforts to bring him to justice for the attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere in Arabia.”
Chouet believes the overtures to bin Laden were bluntly rebuffed. At the forthcoming U.N.-sponsored meetings in Berlin, between July 17 and 21, former U.S. diplomat Tom Simons pressed even harder for the handover of bin Laden. Should he not be handed over, and should solid evidence establish that the terrorist leader had indeed been behind the attack on the USS Cole, he indicated, the United States could be expected to take military action.
If that was the threat, nothing came of it. After the 9/11 attacks in early fall, of course, there would be no more serious discussion. The Taliban did not give up bin Laden, and were rapidly ousted.
There is nothing in the 9/11 Commission Report about a July meeting with bin Laden in Dubai, but there is what may conceivably be a small clue. At a May 29 meeting with CIA officials, the report notes, National Security Adviser Rice had asked “whether any approach could be made to influence bin Laden.”
The genesis of these straws in the historical wind about a purported meeting between CIA officers and bin Laden in summer 2001 may have been disinformation spread for some political purpose. The 9/11 Commission, though, should have investigated the matter and been seen to have done so.
OTHER PUZZLES remain, some of them with serious implications, as to what Western intelligence services knew about the hijackers before 9/11.
Very soon after 9/11, major newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic ran stories stating that Western intelligence had known about Mohamed Atta for some time. The Chicago Tribune reported as early as September 16 that Atta had been “on a government watchlist of suspected terrorists.” Kate Connolly, a reporter for the British newspaper The Guardian, vividly recalls being told by German officials that operatives “had been trailing Atta for some time, and keeping an eye on the house he lived in on Marienstrasse.”
No evidence was to emerge of Atta having been on a watchlist. It is evident, though, that both German intelligence and the CIA had long been interested not merely in Islamic extremists in Germany but—at one stage—in the men on Marienstrasse. Congress’s Joint Inquiry Report aired a little of this, but the Commission Report virtually ignored the subject.
So far as can be reconstructed, the sequence of events was as follows. Well before the future terrorists rented the Marienstrasse apartment, German intelligence took an interest in two men in particular. The first was Mohammed Zammar, who seemed to be facilitating jihadi travel to Afghanistan. The name of a second man, a Hamburg businessman named Mamoun Darkazanli, came up repeatedly—especially when a card bearing his address was found in the possession of a suspect in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. There was intermittent physical surveillance of both men, and Zammar’s telephone was tapped.
It was an incoming call, picked up by the Zammar tap in January 1999, that first drew attention to the apartment on Marienstrasse. A German intelligence report of the call, a copy of which is in the authors’ possession, shows that the name of the person calling Zammar was “Marwan.” The conversation was unexciting, an exchange about Marwan’s studies and a trip Zammar had made. In a second call, a caller looking for Zammar was given the number of the Marienstrasse apartment—76 75 18 30—and the name of one of its tenants, “Mohamed Amir.” On a third call, in September, Zammar sent “Mohamed Amir” his greetings.
Amir, of course, was the last name most used—prior to his departure for the United States—by the man who was to become known to the world as Mohamed Atta.
Those tapped calls are of greatest interest today in the context of the CIA’s performance. The Germans reportedly thought the “Marwan” lead “particularly valuable,” and passed the information about it to the CIA. The caller named “Marwan,” they noted, had been speaking on a mobile phone registered in the United Arab Emirates. According to George Tenet, testifying in 2004 to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the CIA “didn’t sit around” on receipt of this information, but “did some things to go find out some things.”
According to security officials in the UAE, the number could have been identified in a matter of minutes. The “Marwan” on the call is believed to have been UAE citizen Marwan al-Shehhi, who in 2001 was to fly United 175 into the World Trade Center’s South Tower. Was Shehhi’s mobile phone ever monitored by the CIA? Queried on the subject in 2004, U.S. intelligence officials said they were “uncertain.”
The CIA on the ground in Germany did evince major interest in the Hamburg coterie of Islamic extremists. In late 1999, an American official who went by the name of Thomas Volz turned up at the office of the Hamburg state intelligence service—the Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz—with a pressing request.
Though he used the cover of a diplomatic post, Volz was a CIA agent. The Agency believed that Mamoun Darkazanli “had knowledge of an unspecified terrorist plot.” Volz’s hope, he explained, was that the suspect could be “turned,” persuaded to become an informant and pass on information about al Qaeda activities.
The Germans doubted that Darkazanli could be induced to do any such thing. They tried all the same, and failed. Volz, however, repeatedly insisted they try again. So persistent was he, reportedly, that the CIA’s man eventually tried approaching Darkazanli on his own initiative. To German intelligence officials, this was an outrageous intrusion, a violation of Germany’s sovereignty.
All this at the very time, and soon after, that Atta and his comrades—whom Darkazanli knew well—had traveled to Afghanistan, sworn allegiance to bin Laden, and committed to the 9/11 operation. What really came of Volz’s efforts remains unknown.
The 9/11 Commission Report did not mention the Volz episode. The public remains uninformed, moreover, as to what U.S. intelligence may have learned of the hijackers before they left Germany and became operational in the United States.
THE LEAD on Shehhi arising from the Hamburg phone tap aside, there is information suggesting there was early U.S. interest in his accomplice Ziad Jarrah. In late January 2000, on his way back from the future hijackers’ pivotal visit to Afghanistan, Jarrah was stopped for questioning while in transit at Dubai airport.
“It was at the request of the Americans,” a UAE security official was to say after 9/11, “and it was specifically because of Jarrah’s links with Islamic extremists, his contacts with terrorist organizations.” The reason the terrorist was pulled over, reportedly, was “because his name was on a watchlist” provided by the United States.
During his interro
gation, astonishingly, Jarrah coolly told his questioners that he had been in Afghanistan and now planned to go to the United States to learn to fly—and to spread the word about Islam.
While the airport interview was still under way, according to the UAE record, the Dubai officials made contact with U.S. representatives. “What happened,” a UAE official elaborated in 2003, “was we called the Americans. We said, ‘We have this guy. What should we do with him?’ … their answer was, ‘Let him go, we’ll track him.’ … They told us to let him go.”
At the relevant date in FBI task force documents on Jarrah, and next to another entry about the terrorist’s UAE stopover, an item has been redacted. The symbol beside the redaction stands for: “Foreign Government Information.”
Was there also interest in Mohamed Atta before his arrival in the United States? Several former members of a secret operation run by the DIA, the U.S. military’s Defense Intelligence Agency, went public four years after 9/11 with a disquieting claim. The names of four of the hijackers-to-be, Atta, Shehhi, Hazmi, and Mihdhar, they claimed, had appeared on the DIA’s radar in early 2000, even before they arrived in the United States.
According to the lieutenant colonel who first made the claim, Anthony Shaffer, the names came up in the course of a highly classified DIA operation code-named Able Danger. He and his staff had carried out “data mining,” under a round-the-clock counterterrorist program Shaffer described as the “use of high-powered software to bore into just about everything: any data that was available—and I mean anything. Open-source Internet data, e-mails believed to be terrorist-related, non-secret government data, commercial records, information on foreign companies, logs of visitors to mosques.”