83 “Fishing rod”/“Frankly”: CBS News, 7/26/01. Ashcroft and senior FBI officials had received recent briefings on the increased terrorist threat level. It is conceivable, however, that the decision that Ashcroft not fly commercial was taken because of threats of a different nature. From early on, reportedly, there had been threats to Ashcroft’s personal safety—sparked by his opposition to abortion and gun control (briefings: CR, 258, MFR 04019823, 6/3/04, e.g. Briefing Material, Weekly with Attorney General, 7/12/01, “Ashcroft,” B1, Dan Marcus files, CF; threats: Shenon, 243–).
84 G8 summit: CR, 258, Shenon, 243–;
85 slept ships/Pope/airspace: BBC News, 6/21/01, CNN, 7/17/01, WP, 1/19/02, NYT, 9/26/01.
86 Mubarak: Benjamin & Simon, 342, Daily Record (Glasgow), 9/27/01. Warnings of a possible bin Laden attack at Genoa, specifically targeting Bush, also reportedly came from German and Russian intelligence. There were also concerns that violent protest might disturb public order during the summit (BBC News, 6/27/01, CNN, 7/17/01).
CHAPTER 27
1 Dubai/passport copied: New Yorker, 7/10/06, Wright, 311, Report, JI, 144, but see Bamford, Shadow Factory, 18–.
2 CIA had not placed: In spite of the discovery of an internal CIA cable alleging that the visa information had been shared with the FBI, complex investigation did nothing to substantiate the assertion. Other documents, the 9/11 Commission reported, “contradict” the claim that the visa information was shared with the Bureau. The Commission flatly states that “no one alerted the INS or the FBI” to look for Mihdhar or his traveling companion, Nawaf al-Hazmi (CR, 502n44, 354, & see Tenet, 195).
3 Mihdhar/visas/July 4: Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, 33–, 37;
4 two groups/NJ/Fort Lauderdale: CR, 230, 240, 248, 253, WP, 9/30/01, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;
5 Mihdhar/crammed: ibid., CR, 240–, McDermott, 221;
6 Hazmi bride: CR, 222, marriage obligatory: Fouda & Fielding, 81, & see, e.g., “The Importance of Marriage in Islam,” www.sunniforum.com.
7 Atta: Chicago Tribune, 9/11/04, Newsweek, 10/1/01, Bernstein, 105, MFR 04017500, 12/4/03. In a 2004 book, author Daniel Hopsicker gave an account of a supposed relationship, covering periods in 2000 and 2001, between Atta and a young woman named Amanda Keller. Widely circulated on the Internet, the account presents a picture of a deeply unpleasant character who—were the account to prove accurate—frequented sleazy nightspots, beat his girlfriend, and—in one savage incident—killed and dismembered one of her cats and an entire litter of kittens. After lengthy analysis of a tangled scenario, however, the authors concluded that this has been a matter of mistaken identity. A young woman who—according to the Hopsicker account—accompanied Atta and Keller on a trip to the Florida Keys did not recognize pictures of the authentic Atta as the “Mohamed” who made the trip. Keller’s mother and sister are reported as having said that her Mohamed was “tall,” “lanky,” while Atta was only five foot seven. She said early on her boyfriend was French Canadian, and that he told her he had fathered a child in France. That could of course have been a lie—except for another element. According to Keller, the name her Mohamed used at one point to sign a document was “Mohamed Arajaki”—and an official list of men of interest to law enforcement after 9/11 includes a reference to an “Arakj, Mohamad” with a French address.
In the transcript of a long interview with Hopsicker, Keller refers to her sometime boyfriend only as Mohamed, not as Atta or as definitely having been Atta. Press reports of interviews with Keller, moreover, have twice thrown doubt on the notion that her boyfriend was future hijacker Atta. Phone checks, said a counterterrorism agent cited in the second report—in 2006—indicated that the real Atta and Keller never called each other. Keller herself was quoted in that report as saying her Mohamed had been “another flight student not connected to 9/11.” If she had given the impression that he was the real Atta, she reportedly said, that had been “my bad for lying.… I really didn’t think about it until after I did it.” The authors did not succeed in reaching Keller for interview. (Hopsicker account: Hopsicker, refs., Keller videotape seen by authors, transcript provided by Hopsicker; trip to Keys: ints. & corr. Linda Lopez; “tall”/“lanky”: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/24/01; 5’7”: Temporary Airman Certificate, “Airman Records,” B45, T5, CF; “Arajaki”: Hopsicker, 76; list: AP, 10/12/01, list inadvertently released first in Finland, later in Italy, in authors’ collection; press reports: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/23/01, 9/10/06; in addition, relevant authors’ interviews included Elaine Emrich, Stephanie Frederickson, Vicky Keyser, Earle Kimel, Tony & Vonnie LaConca, and Neil Patton).
8 injections: NYT, 4/25/11;
9 KSM stipend: CR, 518n40.
10 muslimmarriage.com: MFR of int. [name redacted], 2/23/04, CF. Two of the hijack pilots had married or gone through a form of marriage. As early as 1999, Jarrah and his girlfriend, Aysel, took part in a wedding ceremony at a Hamburg mosque, and—though she would later say she did not consider it binding (the marriage was not registered with the state)—Aysel referred to herself in a letter as Jarrah’s “yearning wife.” Under pressure from his family, Shehhi had married during a trip back to the United Arab Emirates in early 2000—only to decline to go through with the relationship afterward. Mohamed Atta’s father, meanwhile, was to say he found his son a prospective wife who was “nice and delicate, the daughter of a former ambassador.” By one account, Atta agreed to get engaged to the woman in 1999—but any prospect of the union becoming a reality vanished with his extended stay in Germany and growing commitment to jihad. One account holds that Atta spoke of marrying a Turk rather than an Egyptian, because he thought Turkish women “more obedient.” Binalshibh, for his part, picked up a young woman—believed to have been a Japanese Roman Catholic!—in 2000, and proposed within twenty-four hours. She would have to dress and behave in the way required of a Muslim wife, he told her, and that their children would have to be brought up to hate Jews. Though they never met again after the initial five-day interlude, Binalshibh later wrote her emails signed: “Your King, Ramzi.” Records, meanwhile, indicate that two of the muscle hijackers, Banihammad and Omari, were married (Jarrah: McDermott, 78–; Shehhi: ibid., 54, Corbin, 224, Berlin to Counterterrorism, 12/5/03, FBI 315N-WF-227135, INTELWIRE; Atta: Newsweek, 10/1/01, Bernstein, 105, MFR 04017500, 12/4/03, CF; Binalshibh: McDermott, 199–; Banihammad: Riyadh to Counterterrorism, 10/15/01, FBI 265A-NY-280350, Misc. Request 54, “Aliases and Ids,” B62, T5, CF; Omari: Visa Application, 6/8/01, www.oldnationalreview.com).
11 fishing: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;
12 Wacko’s: ibid., “Exclusive: 9/11 Hijacker Stayed at Jacksonville Hotel,” www.firstcoastnews.com.
13 lap dancing/movies/sex toys: “Agents of Terror Leave Mark on Sin City,” 10/4/01, www.sfgate.com, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, FBI report, “The 11 September Hijacker Cell Model,” 2/03, released under FOIA to INTELWIRE. Shehhi’s reported visit to a lap dancing club occurred during a trip to Las Vegas, reported later in this chapter. Earlier, in California in 2000, Hazmi and Mihdhar had also reportedly visited strip clubs. The hijacker who visited the Adult Lingerie Center was Majed Moqed (Shehhi: San Francisco Chronicle, 10/4/01; Hazmi/Mihdhar: LAT, 9/11/02, Newsweek, 6/10/02, 10/15/01; Moqed: Newsday, 9/23/01, Newsweek, 10/15/01, WP, 9/30/01, summary re Majed Moqed, JICI, 4/19/02, FBI03135, www.scribd.com).
14 Jarrah to Germany: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;
15 Rodriguez/“very humble”: Jeffrey Steinberg, “Cheney’s ‘Spoon-Benders’ Pushing Nuclear Armegeddon,” 8/26/05, Executive Intelligence Review, eds. Der Spiegel, 104–;
16 fitness classes: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, “Hijackers’ True Name Usage,” U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit 0G0013;
17 knives: “Hijacker Knife Purchases,” B18, T7, CF;
18 Hortman: MFR 04018712, 4/27/04, & MFR 04018407, 4/12/04, CF, Staff Statement 16, CO;
>
19 Hanjour Hudson/practice flight DC: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Staff Statement 16, CO.
20 familiarize routine/Vegas, etc.: “Hijackers’ True Name Usage,” U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit 0G0013, Report, JI, 139, MFR, 04016230 [Las Vegas Investigative Summary, undated], MFR 04018564, 1/5/04, MFR 04016240, 1/5/04, & MFR 04016244, 1/5/04, CF. Jarrah was accompanied in Las Vegas by an older fellow Arab. The unidentified Arab resembled the “uncle” who had accompanied him days earlier when he rented a small plane at a Philadelphia airport (MFR 04016240, 1/5/04, MFR 04016239, 1/5/04, CF).
21 74 times: McDermott, 222, MFR 04019351, 12/10–11/03, CF;
22 knives: MFR 04019351, 12/10–11/03, CF.
23 needed talk/rendezvous Europe/Spain: CR, 243–, 530n145. The Commission Report suggests that the pair talked at a hotel not far from Cambrils, near Barcelona, and that Atta rented accommodations in the area until July 19. The experienced author Edward Epstein, who had interviewed prominent Spanish investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzón, wrote in a 2007 article that Atta and Binalshibh “dropped from sight leaving no hotel records, cellphone logs or credit-card receipts” from July 9 to July 16. Judge Garzón reasoned that they spent that time at a prearranged safe house organized by a Spanish-based Algerian accomplice and al Qaeda activists in Spain. Phone intercepts showed that Binalshibh was in touch with the Algerian a few weeks later. Other intercepts indicated that the Germany-based Syrian suspect Marmoun Darkazanli (see Ch. 24) was in Spain at approximately the same time. Binalshibh would claim under interrogation that he met no one but Atta in Spain (Cambrils: CR, 244, 530n145; “dropped”/Algerian accomplice: Edward J. Epstein, “The Spanish Connection,” 2/22/07, www.opinionjournal.com, LAT, 1/14/03, CNN, 10/31/01; Darkazanli: LAT, 1/14/03; Binalshibh: CR, 244).
24 OBL wanted/security/“symbols”/“preferred”: Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” CO, 207, 244;
25 WH too tough/streets: CR, 244;
26 “in the hands”: KSM SUBST;
27 necklaces/phones: CR, 245.
28 Atta admitted: Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” CO, 38. If the identifications made by witnesses at the Pelican Alley restaurant in Venice, Florida, are accurate, then Atta and Shehhi may have been back in Venice in late July—with a dark-complexioned companion—engaged in what appeared to be a heated argument (ints. Tom & Renee Adorna, Jeff Pritko).
29 drop out?/called Aysel/ticket/“emotional”: CR, 246–, Staff Statement 16, CO, MFR 04019350, 3/18/04, CR, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE.
30 Binalshibh told KSM: How we come to know about this exchange, which was conducted on the phone, will be discussed in Ch. 30. If meant literally, the reference to cost in the conversation is odd (and perhaps merely code) unless, as the Commission was to surmise, KSM was referring to the cost and trouble of organizing a replacement hijacking pilot. The notional replacement, the commission thought, was likely Zacarias Moussaoui, the French-born terrorist who had been sent to the United States for pilot training early in 2001. During his conversation with Binalshibh, KSM authorized the sending of “skirts” to “Sally,” an instruction believed to mean that Binalshibh was to send Moussaoui $14,000. Binalshibh did so in early August. According to KSM, however, he at no stage contemplated using Moussaoui as a pilot on the 9/11 operation, but rather in a later “second wave” of attacks. As will emerge later in this chapter, Moussaoui would be detained in August because of his suspect behavior at a flight school in Minnesota (CR, 246–, Indictment, 12/01 & Superceding Indictment, 7/02, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Staff Statement 16, CO).
31 “We spent”: Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection;
32 apartment: Jarrah timeline, “03009470, Packet 6, Ziad Jarrah chronology,” www.scribd.com;
33 “This House”: Newsweek, 9/24/01;
34 “big planes”: int. Rosmarie Canel by Hannah Cleaver;
35 GPS: Jarrah timeline;
36 Atta/Hazmi stopped by police: Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Mohamed Mohamed Elamir Awad Elsayed Atta, Enforcement Operations Division, Texas Service Center, Intelligence Division, INS, “Hijacker Primary Documents—AA11,” B51, T5, CF, & see Graham with Nussbaum, 36–;
37 “Every cop”: MFR of George Tenet, 12/23/03, CF;
38 “five or six weeks”: Staff Statement 16, CO, CR, 243;
39 “Salaam”: McDermott, 225.
40 warnings: Chicago attorney David Schippers said soon after 9/11 that he had received information on a coming terror attack on Manhattan and that—“a month before the bombing”—he had tried to get a warning to Attorney General Ashcroft. He said he was never able to reach Ashcroft and was brushed off by Justice Department officials. Schippers’s sources, he said, included FBI agents and policemen. In the summer of 2001, Schippers was attorney for Chicago FBI counterterrorism agent Robert Wright, whose book—a “blueprint on how the events of September 11 were inevitable”—was to be suppressed by the FBI. Schippers had also become a vocal advocate for Jayna Davis, an Oklahoma journalist whose research on the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building posits a Middle East connection to that attack (see Ch. 22). The warnings Schippers said he attempted to pass on were not just of a coming attack on New York City but also covered Davis’s research and information on the infiltration of the United States by the Palestinian group Hamas. The totality of his information, Schippers later concluded, was to lead people to think he was “crazy.” Schippers had earlier served as chief investigative counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment probe of President Clinton (int. David Schippers, The Alex Jones Show, 10/10/01, www.infowars.com, Indianapolis Star, 5/18/02, Chicago magazine, 10/02, Jayna Davis, The Third Terrorist, Nashville: WND, 2004, Foreword).
41 DGSE: “Motley Submissions—French Intelligence Passed to the U.S.—Moussaoui—Planes as Weapons Widely Known,” B10, T2, CF, “Oussama Bin Laden,” leaked DGSE report, 9/13/01, seen by authors.
42 Russian FSB; AFP, 9/16/01’;
43 “20 al Qaeda”: 60 Minutes II: The Plot, CBS, 10/9/02.
44 Muttawakil: Muttawakil’s information was given him, according to the emissary, by the head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yildash. The detail is relevant, for the earliest French intelligence information on bin Laden’s hijacking plans came from Uzbek contacts (see pp. 308–9). Following the U.S. rout of the Taliban regime that he had predicted, former Taliban minister Muttawakil surrendered in early 2002, was for some time held in American custody, then freed. His emissary, who told his story on condition of anonymity, stayed on in Kabul—apparently at liberty. U.S. diplomat David Katz declined to discuss the episode when contacted in 2002. The story was reported by the BBC and the British newspaper The Independent, based on an interview of the emissary by the journalist Kate Clark (BBC News, The Independent [U.K.], 9/7/02).
45 plans postponed: CR, 259, 534n28;
46 “will still happen”: ibid., 260, 534n32;
47 Miller/“very spun-up”: FBI IG;
48 slow progress/“But the Principals’ ”: Testimony of Richard Clarke, 4/8/04, CO;
49 Bush vacation/“I’m sure”: ABC News, 8/3/01, AP, 8/6/01, USA Today, 8/3/01;
50 Cheney: Jackson Hole News & Guide (Wyoming), 8/15/01;
51 poll/“too much”: USA Today, 8/6/01, “Public Critical of Bush’s Vacation Plans,” 8/7/01, www.gallup.com, WP, 8/7/01. As things turned out, the president was to return to Washington a few days earlier than planned, on August 30 (Public Papers of the Presidents, George W. Bush, 2001, www.gpoaccess.gov, 1569);
52 CBS re PDB/“bin Laden’s”: “What Bush Knew Before September 11,” 5/17/02, www.cbsnews.com;
53 Fleischer/“very generalized”: press briefing, 5/16/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.gov;
54 Fleischer follow-up: press briefing, 5/17/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.gov;
55 Rice/“not a warning”/“an analytic”/“hijacking?
??/“could have”: press briefing, 5/16/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov;
56 “historical”: ibid., Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO;
57 struggle: e.g. Report, JI, 1, Kean & Hamilton, 89–;
58 “the most highly”: press briefing by Ari Fleischer, 5/21/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.gov;
59 CIA refused: Report, JI, 1;
60 several released: Thomas Blanton, “The President’s Daily Brief,” National Security Archive, 4/12/04, www.gwu.edu;
61 leather binder: Tenet, 31;
62 “top-secret”: Graham, with Nussbaum, 80;
63 “news digest”: Blanton, “The President’s Daily Brief”;
64 truly secret/dull: ibid., Shenon, 220;
65 Joint Inquiry pressed: Report, JI, 1;
66 Commission/“What did”: Kean & Hamilton, 89–, Zelikow to Kean & Hamilton, Proposal for Breaking PDB Impasse, 9/25/03, “Letters & Memos, Negotiations over Access to PDBs,” B6, Dan Marcus files, CF;
67 “blowtorch”: Ben-Veniste, 239;
68 heading had not read: The Washington Post had reported the correct headline as early as May 19, 2002, two days after Fleischer misstated it. The significance of the press secretary’s omission of the word “in,” however, got lost in the fog of the subsequent White House effort to minimize the PDB’s overall importance (“Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer,” 5/17/02, www.gwu.edu, WP, 5/19/02, Nation, 4/12/04).