 Chapter 6.5 of the 9-11 Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Anna Seumann. The 9-11 Commission Report, Chapter 6.5. The New Administration's Approach. The Bush Administration in its first month faced many problems other than terrorism. They included the collapse of the Middle East peace process and, in April, a crisis over a US so-called spy plane brought down in Chinese territory. The New Administration also focused heavily on Russia, a new nuclear strategy that allowed missile defenses, Europe, Mexico and the Persian Gulf. In the spring, reporting on terrorism surged dramatically. In Chapter 8 we will explore this reporting and the ways agencies responded. These increasingly alarming reports, briefed to the President and top officials, became part of the context in which the New Administration weighed its options for policy on al-Qaeda. Except for a few reports that the CSG considered and apparently judged to be unreliable, none of these pointed specifically to possible al-Qaeda action inside the United States, although the CSG continued to be concerned about the domestic threat. The mosaic of threat intelligence came from the counter-terrorist center, which collected only abroad. Its reports were not supplemented by reports from the FBI. Clark had expressed concern about an al-Qaeda presence in the United States and he worried about an attack on the White House by, quote, his Bola, Hamas, al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, end quote. In May, President Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would himself lead an effort looking at preparations for managing a possible attack by weapons of mass destruction and have more general problems of national preparedness. The next few months were mainly spent organizing the effort and bringing an admiral from the Sixth Fleet back to Washington to manage it. The Vice President's task force was just getting underway when the 9-11 attack occurred. On May 29, at Tenet's request, Rice and Tenet converted their usual weekly meeting into a broader discussion on al-Qaeda. Participants included Clark, CTC chief Kofa Black and Richard, a group chief with authority over the bin Laden unit. Rice asked about, quote, taking the offensive, end quote, and whether any approach could be made to influence bin Laden or the Taliban. Clark and Black replied that the CIA's ongoing disruption activities were taking the offensive and that bin Laden could not be deterred. A wide-ranging discussion then ensued about breaking the back of bin Laden's organization. Tenet emphasized the ambitious plans for covert action that the CIA had developed in December 2000. In discussing the draft authorities for this program in March, CIA officials had pointed out that the spending level envisioned for these plans was larger than the CIA's entire current budget for counter-terrorism covert action. It would be a multi-year program requiring such levels of spending for about five years. The CIA official, Richard, told us that Rice got it. He said she agreed with his conclusions about what needed to be done, although he complained to us that the policy process did not follow through quickly enough. Clark and Black were asked to develop a range of options for attacking bin Laden's organization from the least to most ambitious. Rice and Hadley asked Clark and his staff to draw up the new presidential directive. On June 7, Hadley circulated the first draft, describing it as an admittedly ambitious program for confronting al-Qaeda. The draft NSPD's goal was to, quote, eliminate the al-Qaeda network of terrorist groups as a threat to the United States and to friendly governments, end quote. It called for a multi-year effort involving diplomacy, covert action, economic measures, law enforcement, public diplomacy, and, if necessary, military efforts. The State Department was to work with other governments to end all al-Qaeda sanctuaries and also to work with the Treasury Department to disrupt terrorist financing. The CIA was to develop an expanded covert action program including significant additional funding and aid to anti-Taliban groups. The draft also tasked OMB with ensuring that sufficient funds to support this program were found in US budgets from fiscal years 2002 to 2006. Rice viewed this draft directive as the embodiment of a comprehensive new strategy employing all instruments of national power to eliminate the al-Qaeda threat. Clark, however, regarded the new draft as essentially similar to the proposal he had developed in December 2000 and put forward to the new administration in January 2001. In May or June, Clark asked to be moved from his counter-terrorism portfolio to a new set of responsibilities for cybersecurity. He told us that he was frustrated with his role and with an administration that he considered not, quote, serious about al-Qaeda, end quote. If Clark was frustrated, he never expressed it to her, Rice told us. Diplomacy in blind alleys. Afghanistan. The new administration had already begun exploring possible diplomatic options retracing many of the paths traveled by its predecessors. US envoys again pressed the Taliban to turn bin Laden, quote, over to a country where he could face justice, end quote. And repeated, yet again, the warning that the Taliban would be held responsible for any al-Qaeda attacks on US interests. The Taliban's representatives repeated their old arguments. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told us that while US diplomats were becoming more active on Afghanistan through the spring and summer of 2001, quote, it would be wrong for anyone to characterize this as a dramatic shift from the previous administration, end quote. Footnote. In early July 2001, shortly before retiring, Ambassador Milam met one last time with Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister Jalil in Islamabad. Milam tried to dispel any confusion about where bin Laden fit into US-Taliban relations. The Saudi terrorist was the issue, and he had to be expelled. The State Department's South Asia Bureau called for a less confrontational stance toward the Taliban. It opposed the policy to overthrow the Taliban and was cautious about aiding the Northern Alliance. End footnote. In Deputy's meetings at the end of June, Tenet was asked to assess the prospects for Taliban cooperation with the United States on al-Qaeda. The NSC staff was tasked to flesh out options for dealing with the Taliban. Revisiting these issues tried the patience of some of the officials who felt they had already been down these roads and who found the NSC's procedures slow. Quote, we weren't going fast enough, Armitage told us. Clark kept arguing that moves against the Taliban and al-Qaeda should not have to wait months for a larger review of US policy in South Asia. For the government, headly said to us, we moved it along as fast as we could move it along. As all hope in moving the Taliban faded, debate revived about giving covert assistance to the regime's opponents. Clark and the CIA's Cofor Black renewed the push to aid the Northern Alliance. Clark suggested starting with modest aid just enough to keep the Northern Alliance in the fight and tie down al-Qaeda terrorists without aiming to overflow the Taliban. Rice Hadley and the NSC staff member for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told us they opposed giving aid to the Northern Alliance alone. They argued that the program needed to have a big part for Pashtun opponents of the Taliban. They also thought the program should be conducted on a larger scale than had been suggested. Clark concurred with the idea of a larger program, but he warned that delay risked the Northern Alliance final defeat at the hands of the Taliban. During the spring, the CIA at the NSC's request had developed draft legal authorities, a presidential finding, to undertake a large-scale program of covert assistance to the Taliban's foes. The draft authorities expressly stated that the goal of the assistance was not to overthrow the Taliban. But even this program would be very costly. This was the context for earlier conversations when in March, tenets stressed the need to consider the impact of such a large program on the political situation in the region, and in May, tenets talked to Rice about the need for a multi-year financial commitment. By July, the deputies were moving toward agreement that some last effort should be made to convince the Taliban to shift position, and then, if that failed, the administration would move on the significantly enlarged covert action program. As the draft presidential directive was circulated in July, the State Department sent the deputies a lengthy historical review of U.S. efforts to engage the Taliban about bin Laden from 1996 on. These talks have been fruitless, the State Department concluded. Arguments in the summer brought to the surface the more fundamental issue of whether the U.S. covert action program should seek to overthrow the regime, intervening decisively in this civil war in order to change Afghanistan's government. By the end of a deputies meeting on September 10, officials formally agreed on a three-phase strategy. First, an envoy would give the Taliban a last chance. If this failed, continuing diplomatic pressure would be combined with a planned covert action program encouraging anti-Taliban Afghans of all major ethnic groups to still make the Taliban into civil war and attack al-Qaeda bases while the United States developed an international coalition to undermine the regime. In phase three, if the Taliban's policy still did not change, the deputies agreed that the United States would try covert action to topple the Taliban's leadership from within. The deputies agreed to revise the al-Qaeda presidential directive, then being finalized for presidential approval, in order to add this strategy to it. Armajic explained to us that after months of continuing the previous administration's policy, he and Powell were bringing the State Department to a policy of overthrowing the Taliban. From his point of view, once the United States made the commitment to arm the Northern Alliance even covertly, it was taking action to initiate regime change, and it should give those opponents the strength to achieve complete victory. Pakistan The Bush administration immediately encountered the dilemmas that arose from the varied objectives the United States was trying to accomplish in its relationship with Pakistan. In February 2001, President Bush wrote General Musharraf on a number of matters. He emphasized that bin Laden and al-Qaeda were, quote, a direct threat to the United States and its interests that must be addressed, end quote. He urged Musharraf to use his influence with the Taliban on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Powell and Armajic reviewed the possibility of acquiring more carrot to dangle in front of Pakistan. Given the generally negative view of Pakistan on Capitol Hill, the idea of lifting sanctions may have seemed far-fetched, but perhaps no more so than the idea of persuading Musharraf to antagonize the Islamists in his own government and nation. On June 18, Rice met with the visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar. She, quote, really let him have it, end quote, about al-Qaeda, she told us. Other evidence corroborates her account, but as she was abrading Sattar, Rice recalled thinking that the Pakistani diplomat seemed to have heard it all before. Sattar urged senior U.S. policymakers to engage the Taliban, arguing that such a cause would take time but would produce results. In late June, the deputies agreed to review U.S. objectives. Clark urged Hadley to split off all other issues in U.S.-Pakistani relations and just focus on demanding that Pakistan move vigorously against terrorism. To push the Pakistanists to do before an al-Qaeda attack what Washington would demand that they do after. He had made similar requests in the Clinton administration. He had no more success with Rice than he had with Berger. On August 4, President Bush wrote President Musharraf to request his support in dealing with terrorism and to urge Pakistan to engage actively against al-Qaeda. The new administration was again registering its concerns just as its predecessor had, but it was still searching for new incentives to open up diplomatic possibilities. For its part, Pakistan had done little. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocker described the administration's plan to break this lock-jam as a move from half-engagement to enhanced engagement. The administration was not ready to confront Islamabad and threatened to rupture relations. Deputy Secretary Armitage told us that before 9-11 the envisioned new approach to Pakistan had not yet been attempted. Saudi Arabia. The Bush administration did not develop new diplomatic initiatives on al-Qaeda with the Saudi government before 9-11. Vice President Cheney called Crown Prince Abdullah on July 5, 2001 to seek Saudi help in preventing threatened attacks on American facilities in the Kingdom. Secretary of State Powell met with the Crown Prince twice before 9-11. They discussed topics like Iraq, not al-Qaeda. U.S.-Saudi relations in the summer of 2001 were marked by sometimes heated disagreements about ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence, not about bin Laden. Military Plans The confirmation of the Pentagon's new leadership was a lengthy process. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz was confirmed in March 2001 and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith in July. Though the new officials were briefed about terrorism and some of the earlier planning, including that for Operation Infinite Resolve, they were focused, as Secretary Rumsfeld told us, on creating a 21st-century military. At the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Shelton did not recall much interest by the new administration in military options against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He could not recall any specific guidance on the topic from the Secretary. Brian Sheridan, the outgoing Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, S.O.L.I.C., the key counter-terrorism policy office in the Pentagon, never briefed Rumsfeld. He departed on January 20th. He had not been replaced by 9-11. Rumsfeld noted to us his own interest in terrorism, which came up often in his regular meetings with Tenet. He thought that the Defense Department, before 9-11, was not organized adequately or prepared to deal with new threats like terrorism. But his time was consumed with getting new officials in place and working on the foundation documents of a new defense policy, the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Defense Planning Guidance and the existing contingency plans. He did not recall any particular counter-terrorism issue that engaged his intention before 9-11, other than the development of the Predator Unmanned Aircraft System. The Commander of Central Command, General Franks, told us that he did not regard the existing plans as serious. To him, a real military plan to address al-Qaeda would need to go all the way, following through the details of a full campaign, including the political-military issues of where operations would be based, and securing the rights to fly over neighboring countries. The draft presidential directive circulated in June 2001 began its discussion of the military by reiterating the Defense Department's lead role in protecting its forces abroad. The draft included a section directing Secretary Rumsfeld to develop contingency plans to attack both al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan. The new section did not specifically order planning for the use of ground troops or clarify how these guidance differed from the existing Infinite Resolve plans. Footnote The annex said that Pentagon planning was also to include options to eliminate weapons of mass destruction that the al-Qaeda network might acquire or make. End footnote Hadley told us that by circulating this section, a draft annex B to the directive, the White House was putting the Pentagon on notice that it would need to produce new military plans to address this problem. The military didn't particularly want this mission, Rice told us. With this directive still awaiting President Bush's signature, Secretary Rumsfeld did not order his subordinates to begin preparing any new military plans against either al-Qaeda or the Taliban before 9-11. President Bush told us that before 9-11 he had not seen good options for special military operations against bin Laden. Suitable bases in neighboring countries were not available, and even if the US forces were sent in, it was not clear where they would go to find bin Laden. President Bush told us that before 9-11 there was an appetite in the government for killing bin Laden, not for war. Looking back in 2004, he equated the presidential directive with a readiness to invade Afghanistan. The problem, he said, would have been how to do that if there had not been another attack on America. To many people, he said, it would have seemed like an ultimate act of unilateralism, but he said that he was prepared to take that on. Domestic change and continuity During the transition, Bush had chosen John Ashcroft, a former senator from Missouri, as his Attorney General. On his arrival at the Justice Department, Ashcroft told us, he faced a number of problems spotlighting the need for reform at the FBI. In February, Clark briefed Attorney General Ashcroft on his directorate's issues. He reported that at the time the Attorney General acknowledged a steep learning curve and asked about the progress of the coal investigation. Neither Ashcroft nor his predecessors received the President's daily brief. His office did receive the Daily Intelligence Report for senior officials that, during the spring and summer of 2001, was carrying much of the same threat information. The FBI was struggling to build up its institutional capabilities to do more against terrorism, relying on a strategy called Max Cap-05 that had been unveiled in the summer of 2000. The FBI's Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, Dale Watson, told us that he felt the new Justice Department leadership was not supportive of this strategy. Watson had the sense that the Justice Department wanted the FBI to get back to the investigative basics, guns, drugs and civil rights. The new administration did seek an 8% increase in overall FBI funding in its initial budget proposal for fiscal year 2002, including the largest proposed percentage increase in the FBI's counterterrorism programme since fiscal year 1997. The additional funds included the FBI's support of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, a one-time increase, enhanced security at FBI facilities and improvement to the FBI's WMD incident response capability. In May, the Justice Department began shaping plans for building a budget for fiscal year 2003, the process that would usually culminate in an administration proposal at the beginning of 2002. On May 9, the Attorney General testified at a congressional hearing concerning federal efforts to combat terrorism. He said that one of the nation's most fundamental responsibilities is to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks. The budget guidance issued the next day, however, highlighted gun crimes, narcotics trafficking and civil rights as priorities. Watson told us that he almost fell out of his chair when he saw this memo because it did not mention counterterrorism. Long-time FBI Director Louis Free left in June 2001 after announcing the indictment in the Cobart Towers case that he had worked so long to obtain. Thomas Picard was the acting director during the summer. Free's successor Robert Mueller took office just before 9-11. The Justice Department prepared a draft fiscal year 2003 budget that maintained but did not increase the funding level for counterterrorism in its pending fiscal year 2002 proposal. Picard appealed for more counterterrorism enhancements and appealed the Attorney General denied on September 10. Footnote. Picard told us that he approached Ashcroft and asked him to reconsider DOJ's denial of the FBI's original counterterrorism budget request in light of the continuing threat. It was not uncommon for FBI budget requests to be reduced by the Attorney General or by OMB before being submitted to Congress. This had occurred during the previous administration. Footnote. Ashcroft had also inherited an ongoing debate on whether and how to modify the 1995 procedures governing intelligence sharing between the FBI and the Justice Department's criminal division. But in August 2001 Ashcroft's deputy Larry Thompson issued a memorandum reaffirming the 1995 procedures with the clarification that evidence of any federal felony was to be immediately reported by the FBI to the criminal division. The 1995 procedures remained in effect until after 9-11. Footnote. Chapter 3. We discuss how this problem arose. By 2001 it had become worse. During 2000 the FBI had erred in preparing some of its applications for FISA surveillance, mistaking how much information had been shared with criminal prosecutors and the nature of the walls between the intelligence and law enforcement functions within the FBI. In March 2001 Judge Royce Lamberth, Chief Judge of the FISA Court, testized the FBI, sending a letter to Ashcroft announcing he was banning an offending supervisory agent from appearing before the court. Judge Lamberth also met personally with Ashcroft and his acting deputy, Robert Mueller, to complain about the performance of the FBI and the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, OIPR. In July 2001 the General Accounting Office criticized the way the 1995 procedures were being applied and criticized OIPR and FBI for not complying with the information sharing requirements of the 1995 procedures. This was the third report in as many years by a government agency indicating that the procedures were not working as planned. In October 2000, December 2000 and March 2001 proposals for reform to the 1995 procedures were put forth by senior DOJ officials, none resulted in reform. One impediment was that their respective DOJ components could not agree on all the proposed reforms. A second impediment was a concern that such reforms would require a challenge to the FISA Court's position on the matter. This was considered risky because the FISA Court of Review had never convened and one of the judges had previously voiced skepticism regarding the constitutionality of the FISA statute. Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson did ask the court to accept the modifications described in the text which were distributed as part of his August 2001 memorandum reaffirming the 1995 procedures. Covert Action and the Predator In March 2001, Rice asked the CIA to prepare a new series of authorities for covert action in Afghanistan. Rice's recollection was that the idea had come from Clark and the NSC Senior Director for Intelligence, Mary McCarthy, and had been linked to the proposal for aid to the Northern Alliance and the USPEX. Rice described the draft document as providing for consolidation plus superseding the various Clinton administration documents. In fact, the CIA drafted two documents. One was a finding that did concern aid to opponents of the Taliban regime. The other was a draft memorandum of notification which included more open-ended language authorizing possible lethal action in a variety of situations. Tenet delivered both to Hadley on March 28. The CIA's notes for Tenet advised him that in response to the NSC request for drafts that will help the policymakers review their options, each of the documents has been crafted to provide the agency with the broadest possible discretion permissible under the law. At the meeting, Tenet argued for deciding on a policy before deciding on the legal authorities to implement it. Hadley accepted this argument and the draft MON was put on hold. Footnote. This tasking may have occurred before Rice's March 15, 2001 meeting with Tenet. Attorney General John Ashcroft told us he told Rice on March 7, 2001 that his lawyers had determined that the existing legal authorities for covert action against bin Laden were unclear and insufficient and that he suggested new explicit kill authorities be developed. As the policy review moved forward, the planned covert action program for Afghanistan was included in the draft presidential directive as part of an NXA on intelligence activities to eliminate the al-Qaeda threat. The main debate during the summer of 2001 concentrated on the one new mechanism for a lethal attack on bin Laden, an armed version of the predator drone. In the first months of the new administration, questions concerning the predator became more and more a central focus of dispute. Clark favored resuming predator flights over Afghanistan as soon as weather permitted, hoping that they still might provide the elusive, actionable intelligence to target bin Laden with cruise missiles. Learning that the Air Force was thinking of equipping predators with warheads, Clark became even more enthusiastic about redeployment. The CTC chief Kofa Black argued against deploying the predator for reconnaissance purposes. He recalled that the Taliban had spotted a predator in the fall of 2000 and scrambled their MIG fighters. Black wanted to wait until the armed version was ready. Quote, I do not believe the possible recon value outweighs the risk of possible program termination when the stakes are raised by the Taliban parading a charred predator in front of CNN, he wrote. Military officers and the joint staff shared his concern. Footnote. The mission commander for the predator flights, Air Force Major Mark A. Kuta, had registered his opposition to redeploying the aircraft back in December 2000. Quote, given the cost-benefit ratio from these continued missions, it seems senseless. End quote. End footnote. There is some dispute as to whether or not the deputies' committee endorsed resuming reconnaissance flights at its April 30, 2001 meeting. In any event, Rice and Hadley ultimately went along with the CIA in the Pentagon, holding off on reconnaissance flights until the armed predator was ready. Footnote. CNSC memo, summary of conclusions of deputies' committee meeting April 30, 2001. This document noted the consensus in favour of reconnaissance missions for Comansik and DLI, but DDCI McLaughlin told us that he and Black believed that no such decision had been made at the meeting. Hadley told us he believed that a decision had been made at the meeting to fly such missions. End footnote. The CIA's senior management saw problems with the armed predator as well, problems that Clark and even Black and Allen were inclined to minimise. One, which also applied to reconnaissance flights, was money. A predator cost about three million US dollars. If the CIA flew predators for its own reconnaissance or covered action purposes, it might be able to borrow them from the Air Force, but it was not clear that the Air Force would bear the cost if a vehicle went down. Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz took the position that the CIA should have to pay for it. The CIA disagreed. Footnote. Allen described the quibbling over financing the predator program as ridiculous. End footnote. Second, Tannert in particular questioned whether he, as Director of Central Intelligence, should operate an armed predator. This was new ground, he told us. Tannert ticked off key questions. What is the chain of command? Who takes the shot? Are America's leaders comfortable with the CIA doing this, going outside of normal military command and control? Third, Allen told us that when these questions were discussed at the CIA, he and the agency's executive director, A.B. Buzzy Crongrad, had said that either one of them would be happy to pull the trigger. But Tannert was appalled, telling them that they had no authority to do it, nor did he. Third, the Hellfire warhead, carried by the predator, needed work. It had been built to hit tanks, not people. It needed to be designed to explode in a different way, and even then had to be targeted with extreme precision. In the configuration planned by the Air Force through mid-2001, the predator's missile would not be able to hit a moving vehicle. White House officials had seen the predator video of the man in white. On July 11, Hadley tried to hurry along preparation of the armed system. He directed McLaughlin, Wolffowitz, and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Richard Myers to deploy predators capable of being armed no later than September 1. He also directed that they have cost-sharing arrangements in place by August 1. Rice told us that this attempt by Hadley to dictate a solution had failed and that she eventually had to intervene herself. On August 1, the deputies' committee met again to discuss the armed predator. They concluded that it was legal for the CIA to kill Bin Laden, or one of its deputies, with a predator. Such strikes would be acts of self-defense that would not violate the ban on assassinations in Executive Order 12333. The big issues—who would pay for what, who would authorize strikes, and who would pull the trigger—were left for the principles to settle. The Defense Department representatives did not take positions on these issues. The CIA's McLaughlin had also been reticent. When Hadley circulated the memorandum attempting to prod the deputies to reach agreement, McLaughlin sent it back with a handwritten comment on the cost-sharing. Quote, We question whether it is advisable to make such an investment before the decision is taken on flying an armed predator. End quote. For Clark, this came close to being a final straw. He angrily asked Rice to call Tenet. Either Al-Qaeda is a threat worth acting against or it is not, Clark wrote. CIA leadership has to decide which it is and seize these bipolar mood swings. These debates, though, had little impact in advancing or delaying efforts to make the predator ready for combat. Those were in the hands of military officers and engineers. General John Jumper had commanded U.S. air forces in Europe and seen predators used for reconnaissance in the Balkans. He started the program to develop an armed version and, after returning in 2000, to head the air combat command took direct charge of it. There were numerous technical problems, especially with the Hellfire missiles. The air force tests conducted during the spring were inadequate so missile testing needed to continue and modifications needed to be made during the summer. Even then, Jumper told us, problems with the equipment persisted. Nevertheless, the air force was moving at an extraordinary pace. In the modern era, since the 1980s, Jumper said to us, I would be shocked if you found anything that went faster than this. September 2001. The principal's committee had its first meeting on Al-Qaeda on September 4. On the day of the meeting, Clark sent Rice an impassioned personal note. He criticized U.S. counterterrorism efforts past and present. The real question before the principal's he wrote was, Are we serious about dealing with the Al-Qaeda threat? Is Al-Qaeda a big deal? Decision makers should imagine themselves on a future day when the CSG has not succeeded in stopping Al-Qaeda attacks and hundreds of Americans lay dead in several countries, including the U.S. Clark wrote. What would those decision makers wish that they had done earlier? That future day could happen at any time. Clark then turned to the Coal. The fact that the USS Coal was attacked during the last administration does not absolve us of responding for the attack, he wrote. Many in Al-Qaeda and the Taliban may have drawn the wrong lesson from the Coal, that they can kill Americans without there being a U.S. response, without there being a price. One might have thought that with a $250 million hole in a destroyer and 17 dead sailors, the Pentagon might have wanted to respond. Instead they have often talked about the fact that there is nothing worth hitting in Afghanistan and said the cruise missiles cost more than the jungle gyms and mud huts at terrorist camps. Clark could not understand why we continue to allow the existence of large-scale Al-Qaeda bases where we know people are being trained to kill Americans. Turning to the CIA, Clark warned that its bureaucracy, which was masterful at passive-aggressive behavior, would resist funding the new National Security Presidential Directive, leaving it a hollow-shell words without deeds. The CIA would insist its other priorities were more important. Invoking President Bush's own language, Clark wrote, You are left with a modest effort to swat flies to try to prevent specific Al-Qaeda attacks by using intelligence to detect them and friendly government's police and intelligence officers to stop them. You are left waiting for the big attack with lots of casualties after which some major U.S. retaliation will be in order. Rice told us she took Clark's memo as a warning not to get dragged down by bureaucratic inertia. While his arguments have false, we also take Clark's Jeremiah as something more. After nine years on the NSC staff and more than three years as the President's National Coordinator, he had often failed to persuade these agencies to adopt his views or to persuade his superiors to set an agenda of the sort he wanted or that the whole government could support. Meanwhile, another counterterrorism veteran, Kofo Black, was preparing his boss for the Principal's meeting. He advised Tenet that the draft Presidential Directive envisioned an ambitious covert action programme but that the authorities for it had not yet been approved and the funding still had not been found. If the CIA was reluctant to use the Predator, Black did not mention it. He wanted a timely decision from the Principal's, adding that the window for missions within 2001 was a short one. The Principal's would have to decide whether Rice, Tenet, Rumsfeld or someone else would give the order to fire. At the September 4th meeting, the Principal's approved the draft Presidential Directive with little discussion. Rice told us that she had at some point told President Bush that she and his other advisors thought it would take three years or so for their al-Qaeda strategy to work. They then discussed the Armed Predator. Hadley portrayed the Predator as a useful tool, although perhaps not for immediate use. Rice, who had been advised by her staff that the Armed Predator was not ready for deployment, commented about the potential for using the Armed Predator in the spring of 2002. The State Department supported the Armed Predator, although Secretary Powell was not convinced that bin Laden was as easy to target as had been suggested. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was skittish, cautioning about the implications of trying to kill an individual. The Defense Department favoured strong action. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz questioned the United States' ability to deliver bin Laden and bring him to justice. He favoured going after bin Laden as part of a larger airstrike, similar to what had been done in the 1986 U.S. strike against Libya. General Myers emphasised the Predator's value for surveillance, perhaps enabling broader airstrikes that would go beyond bin Laden to attack al-Qaeda's training infrastructure. The principals also discussed which agency, CIA or Defence, should have the authority to fire a missile from the Armed Predator. At the end, Rice summarised the meeting's conclusions. The Armed Predator capability was needed but not ready. The Predator would be available for the military to consider along with its other options. The CIA should consider flying reconnaissance-only missions. The principals, including the previously reluctant Tenet, thought that such reconnaissance flights were a good idea, combined with other efforts to get actionable intelligence. Tenet deferred an answer on the additional reconnaissance flights, conferred with his staff after the meeting and then directed the CIA to press ahead with them. A few days later, a final version of the draft presidential directive was circulated, incorporating two minor changes made by the principals. On September 9th, dramatic news arrived from Afghanistan. The leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud, had granted an interview in his bungalow near the Tajikistan border with two men whom the Northern Alliance leader had been told were Arab journalists. The supposed reporter and cameraman, actually Al Qaeda assassins, then set off a bomb riddling Massoud's chest with Trapnel. He died minutes later. On September 10th, Hadley gathered the deputies to finalise their three-phase multi-year plan to pressure and perhaps ultimately topple the Taliban leadership. That same day, Hadley instructed DCI Tenet to have the CIA prepare new draft legal authorities for the broad covert action programme envisioned by the draft presidential directive. Hadley also directed Tenet to prepare a separate section authorising a broad range of other covert activities including authority to capture or to use lethal force against Al Qaeda command and control elements. This section would supersede the Clinton-era documents. Hadley wanted the authorities to be flexible and broad enough to cover any additional UBL-related covert actions contemplated. Funding still needed to be located. The military component remained unclear. Pakistan remained uncooperative. The domestic policy institutions were largely uninvolved. But the pieces were coming together for an integrated policy dealing with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistan. End of chapter 6.5 Chapter 7.1 of the 9-11 Commission Report This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. The 9-11 Commission Report. Chapter 7.1 The Attack Looms First Arrivals in California In chapter 5 we described the Southeast Asia Travels of Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Midyar, and others in January 2000 on the first part of the planes operation. In that chapter we also described how Midhar was spotted in Kuala Lumpur early in January 2000 along with associates who were not identified and was lost to sight when the group passed through Bangkok. On January 15th, Hazmi and Midhar arrived in Los Angeles. They spent about two weeks there before moving on to San Diego. Two weeks in Los Angeles. Why Hazmi and Midhar came to California we do not know for certain. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, KSM, the organizer of the planes operation, explains that California was a convenient point of entry from Asia and had the added benefit of being far away from the intended target area. Hazmi and Midhar were ill-prepared for a mission in the United States. Their only qualifications for this plot were their devotion to Osama bin Laden, their veteran service, and their ability to get valid U.S. visas. Neither had spent any substantial time in the West and neither spoke much if any English. It would therefore be plausible that they or KSM would have tried to identify in advance a friendly contact for them in the United States. In detention, KSM denies that Al Qaeda had any agents in Southern California. We do not credit this denial. We believe it is unlikely that Hazmi and Midhar, neither of whom, in contrast to the Hamburg group, had any prior exposure to life in the West, would have come to the United States without arranging to receive assistance from one or more individuals informed in advance of their arrival. KSM says that though he told others involved in the conspiracy to stay away from mosques and to avoid establishing personal contacts, he made an exception in this case and instructed Hazmi and Midhar to pose his newly arrived Saudi students and seek assistance at local mosques. He counted on their breaking off any such relationships once they moved to the East Coast. Our inability to ascertain the activities of Hazmi and Midhar during their first two weeks in the United States may reflect Al Qaeda tradecraft designed to protect the identity of anyone who may have assisted them during that period. Hazmi and Midhar were directed to enroll in English language classes upon arriving in Southern California so that they could begin pilot training as soon as possible. KSM claims to have steered the two to San Diego on the basis of his own research, which supposedly included thumbing through a San Diego phone book acquired at a Karachi flea market. Contradicting himself, he also says that as instructed, they attempted to enroll in three language schools in Los Angeles. After the pair cleared immigration and customs at Los Angeles International Airport, we do not know where they went. They appear to have obtained assistance from the Muslim community, specifically the community surrounding the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, one of the most prominent mosques in Southern California. It is fairly certain that Hazmi and Midhar spent time at the King Fahd Mosque and made some acquaintances there. One witness interviewed by the FBI after the September 11th attacks has said he first met the hijackers at the mosque in early 2000. Furthermore, one of the people who would befriend them, a man named Madar Abdullah, recalled a trip with Hazmi and Midhar to Los Angeles in June when on their arrival the three went to the King Fahd Mosque. There, Hazmi and Midhar greeted various individuals whom they appeared to have met previously, including a man named Kalam. And Abdullah's telling, when Kalam visited the Al Qaeda operatives at their motel that evening, Abdullah was asked to leave the room so that Hazmi, Midhar, and Kalam could meet in private. The identity of Kalam and his purpose in meeting with Hazmi and Midhar remain unknown. To understand what Hazmi and Midhar did in their first weeks in the United States, evidently staying in Los Angeles, we have investigated whether anyone associated with the King Fahd Mosque assisted them. This subject has received substantial attention in the media. Some have speculated that Fahd Al-Thumari, an Imam at the mosque and an accredited diplomat at the Saudi Arabian Consulate from 1996 until 2003, may have played a role in helping the hijackers establish themselves on their arrival in Los Angeles. This speculation is based, at least in part, on Thumari's reported leadership of an extremist faction at the mosque. A well-known figure at the King Fahd Mosque and within the Los Angeles Muslim community, Thumari was reputed to be an Islamic fundamentalist and a strict adherent to Orthodox Wahhabi doctrine. Some Muslims concerned about his preaching have said he injected non-Islamic themes into his guidance slash prayers at the King Fahd Mosque and had followers supportive of the events of September 11, 2001. Thumari appears to have associated with a particularly radical faction within the community of local worshippers and had a network of contacts in other cities in the United States. After 9-11, Thumari's conduct was a subject of internal debate among some Saudi officials. He apparently lost his position at the King Fahd Mosque possibly because of his immoderate reputation. On May 6, 2003, Thumari attempted to re-enter the United States from Saudi Arabia but was refused entry based on a determination by the State Department that he might be connected with terrorist activity. When interviewed by both the FBI and the Commission's staff, Thumari has denied preaching anti-Western sermons much less promoting violent jihad. More to the point, he claimed not to recognize either Hasmi or Medar. Both denials are somewhat suspect. He likewise denied knowing Omar Al-Bayyumi, a man from San Diego we will discuss shortly even though witnesses and telephone records established that the two men had contact with each other. Similarly, Thumari's claim not to know Modar Abdullah is belied by Abdullah's contrary assertion. On the other hand, Thumari undoubtedly met with and provided religious counseling to countless individuals during his tenure at the King Fahd Mosque so he might not remember two transients like Hasmi and Medar several years later. The circumstantial evidence makes Thumari a logical person to consider as a possible contact for Hasmi and Medar. Yet, after exploring the available leads, we have not found evidence that Thumari provided assistance to the two operatives. We do not pick up their trail until February 1, 2000 when they encountered Omar Al-Bayyumi and Kasim Ben-Don at a Halal food restaurant on Venice Boulevard in Culver City a few blocks away from the King Fahd Mosque. Bayyumi and Ben-Don have both told us that they had driven up from San Diego earlier that day so that Bayyumi could address a visa issue and collect some papers from the Saudi consulate. Bayyumi heard Hasmi and Medar speaking of what he recognized to be Gulf Arabic and struck up a conversation. Since Ben-Don knew only a little Arabic, he had to rely heavily on Bayyumi to translate for him. Medar and Hasmi said they were students from Saudi Arabia who had just arrived in the United States to study English. They said they were living in an apartment near the restaurant but did not specify the address. They did not like Los Angeles and were having a hard time especially because they did not know anyone. Bayyumi told them how pleasant San Diego was and offered to help them settle there. The two pairs then left the restaurant and went their separate ways. Bayyumi and Ben-Don have been interviewed many times about the February 1st, 2000 lunch. For the most part, their respective accounts corroborate each other. However, Bayyumi has said that he and Ben-Don attempted to visit the King Fod Mosque after lunch but could not find it. Ben-Don, on the other hand, recalls visiting the mosque twice that day for prayers both before and after the meal. Ben-Don's recollection is spotty and inconsistent. Bayyumi's version can be challenged as well since the mosque is close to the restaurant and Bayyumi had visited it and the surrounding area on multiple occasions including twice within six weeks of February 1st. We do not know whether the lunch encounter occurred by chance or design. We know about it because Bayyumi told law enforcement that it happened. Bayyumi, then 42 years old, was in the United States as a business student supported by a private contractor for the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority where Bayyumi had worked for over twenty years. The object of considerable media speculation following 9-11, he lives now in Saudi Arabia well aware of his notoriety. Both we and the FBI have interviewed him and investigated evidence about him. Bayyumi is a devout Muslim, obliging and gregarious. He spent much of his spare time involved in religious study in helping run a mosque in El Cajon about fifteen miles from San Diego. It is certainly possible that he has dissembled about some aspects of his story, perhaps to counter suspicion. On the other hand, we have seen no credible evidence that he believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups. Our investigators who have dealt directly with him and studied his background find him to be an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists. The move to San Diego. By February 4th, Hasmi and Medar had come to San Diego from Los Angeles, possibly driven by Modar Abdullah. Abdullah, a Yemeni university student in his early twenties, is fluent in both Arabic and English and was perfectly suited to assist the hijackers in pursuing their mission. After 9-11, Abdullah was interviewed many times by the FBI. He admitted knowing of Hasmi and Medar's extremist leanings and Medar's involvement with the Islamic Army of Aden, a group with ties to al-Qaeda back in Yemen. Abdullah clearly was sympathetic to those extremist views. During a post 9-11 search of his possessions, the FBI found a notebook belonging to someone else with references to planes falling from the sky, mass killing and hijacking. Further, when detained as a material witness following the 9-11 attacks, Abdullah expressed hatred for the U.S. government and stated that the U.S. brought this on themselves. When interviewed by the FBI after 9-11, Abdullah denied having advanced knowledge of attacks. In May 2004, however, we learned of reports about Abdullah bragging to fellow inmates at a California prison in September through October 2003 that he had known Hasmi and Medar were planning a terrorist attack. The stories attributed to Abdullah are not entirely consistent with each other. Specifically, according to one inmate, Abdullah claimed an unnamed individual had notified him that Hasmi and Medar would be arriving in Los Angeles with plans to carry out an attack. Abdullah allegedly told the same inmate that he had driven the two al-Qaeda operatives from Los Angeles to San Diego but did not say when this occurred. We went unable to corroborate this account. Another inmate has recalled Abdullah claiming he first heard about the hijackers' terrorist plans after they arrived in San Diego when they told him they planned to fly an airplane into a building and invited him to join them on the plane. According to this inmate, Abdullah also claimed to have found out about the 9-11 attacks three weeks in advance, a claim that appears to dovetail with evidence that Abdullah may have received a phone call from Hasmi around that time, that he stopped making calls from his telephone after August 25, 2001, and that according to his friends, he started acting strangely. Although both some among prison inmates often tend to be unreliable, this evidence is obviously important. To date, neither we nor the FBI have been able to verify Abdullah's alleged jailhouse statements despite investigative efforts. We thus do not know when or how Hasmi and Midar first came to San Diego. We do know that on February 4, they went to the Islamic center of San Diego to find Omar al-Bayyumi and take him up on his offer of help. Bayyumi obliged by not only locating an apartment, but also helping them to fill out the lease application, co-signing the lease, and when the real estate agent refused to take cash for a deposit, helping them open a bank account, which they did with a $9,900 deposit. He then provided a certified check from his own account for which the al-Qaeda operatives reimbursed him on the spot for the deposit. Neither then nor later did Bayyumi give money to either Hasmi or Midar who had received money from KSM. Hasmi and Midar moved in with no furniture and practically no possessions. Soon after the move, Bayyumi used their apartment for a party attended by some 20 male members of the Muslim community. At Bayyumi's request, Ben Don videotaped the gathering with Bayyumi's video camera. Hasmi and Midar did not mingle with the other guests and reportedly spent most of the party by themselves off camera in a back room. Hasmi and Midar immediately started looking for a different place to stay. Based on their comment to Bayyumi about the first apartment being expensive, one might infer that they wanted to save money. They may also have been reconsidering the wisdom of living so close to the video camera wielding Bayyumi who Hasmi seemed to think was some sort of Saudi spy. Just over a week after moving in, Hasmi and Midar filed a 30-day notice of intention to vacate. Bayyumi apparently loaned them his cell phone to help them check out possibilities for new accommodations. Their initial effort to move turned out poorly. An acquaintance arranged with his landlord to have Midar take over his apartment. Midar put down a $650 deposit and signed a lease for the apartment effective March 1st. Several weeks later, Midar sought a refund of his deposit, claiming he no longer intended to move in because the apartment was too messy. When the landlord refused to refund the deposit, Midar became belligerent. The landlord remembers him ranting and raving as if he were psychotic. Hasmi and Midar finally found a room to rent in the home of an individual they had met at a mosque in San Diego. According to the homeowner, the future hijackers moved in on May 10th, 2000. Midar moved out after only about a month. On June 9th, he left San Diego to return to Yemen. Hasmi, on the other hand, stayed at this house for the rest of his time in California until mid-December. He would then leave for Arizona with the newly arrived 9-11 hijacker pilot, Hani Hanjur. While in San Diego, Hasmi and Midar played the part of recently arrived foreign students. They continued to reach out to members of the Muslim community for help. At least initially, they found well-meaning new acquaintances at the Islamic Center of San Diego, which was only a stone's throw from the apartment where they first lived. For example, when they purchased a used car with cash, they bought it from a man who lived across the street from the Islamic Center and who let them use his address in registering the vehicle, an accommodation to help a fellow Muslim brother. Similarly, in April, when their cash supply may have been dwindling, Hasmi persuaded the administrator of the Islamic Center to let him use the administrator's bank account to receive a $5,000 wire transfer from someone in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. This was KSM's nephew, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali. Hasmi and Midar visited other mosques as well, mixing comfortably as devout worshippers. During the operatives' critical first weeks in San Diego, Madar Abdullah helped them. Translating between English and Arabic, he assisted them in obtaining California driver's licenses and with applying to language and flight schools. Abdullah also introduced them to his circle of friends. He shared an apartment with some of those friends near the Rabat Mosque in La Mesa, a few miles from the hijackers' residence. Abdullah has emerged as a key associate of Hasmi and Midar in San Diego. Detained after 9-11, first as a material witness, then on immigration charges, he was deported to Yemen on 21st 2004 after the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California declined to prosecute him on charges arising out of his alleged jailhouse admissions concerning the 9-11 operatives. The Department of Justice declined to delay his removal pending further investigation of this new information. Other friends of Abdullah also translated for Hasmi and Midar and helped them adjust to life in San Diego. Some held extremist beliefs or were well acquainted with known extremists. For example, immediately after 9-11, Osama Awadallah, a Yemeni whose telephone number was found in Hasmi's Toyota at Washington Dulles International Airport, was found to possess photos, videos, and articles relating to bin Laden. Awadallah also had lived in a house where copies of bin Laden's fatwas and other similar materials were distributed to the residents. Omar Bakarbashat, a Saudi, also met Hasmi and Midar at the Rabat Mosque. He admitted helping Hasmi to learn English and taking over the operatives' first department in San Diego after they moved out. Bakarbashat apparently had downloaded stridently anti-American webpages to his computer's hard drive. Another potentially significant San Diego contact for Hasmi and Midar was Anwar Alaki, an Imam at the Rabat Mosque. Born in New Mexico and thus a U.S. citizen, Alaki grew up in Yemen and studied in the United States on a Yemeni government scholarship. We do not know how or when Hasmi and Midar first met Alaki. The operatives may even have met or at least talked to him the same day they first moved to San Diego. Hasmi and Midar reportedly respected Alaki as a religious figure and developed a close relationship with him. When interviewed after 9-11, Alaki said he did not recognize Hasmi's name but did identify his picture. Although Alaki admitted meeting with Hasmi several times, he claimed not to remember any specifics of what they discussed. He described Hasmi as a soft-spoken Saudi student who used to appear at the mosque with a companion but who did not have a large circle of friends. Alaki left San Diego in mid-2000 and by early 2001 had relocated to Virginia. As we will discuss later, Hasmi eventually showed up at Alaki's mosque in Virginia, an appearance that may not have been coincidental. We have been unable to learn enough about Alaki's relationship with Hasmi and Midar to reach a conclusion. In some, although the evidence is thin as to specific motivations, our overall impression is that soon after arriving in California, Hasmi and Midar sought out and found a group of young and ideologically like-minded Muslims with roots in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, individuals mainly associated with Madar Abdullah and the Rabat Mosque. The Al-Qaeda operatives lived openly in San Diego under their true names, misting Hasmi in the telephone directory. They managed to avoid attracting much attention. Flight training fails. Midar bails out. Hasmi and Midar came to the United States to learn English, take flying lessons and become pilots as quickly as possible. They turned out, however, to be an institute for English. Even with help in tutoring from Madar Abdullah and other bilingual friends, Hasmi and Midar's efforts to learn proved futile. This lack of language skills, in turn, became an insurmountable barrier to learning how to fly. A pilot they consulted at one school, the Sorbi Flying Club in San Diego, spoke Arabic. He explained to them that their flight instruction would begin with small planes. Hasmi and Midar emphasized their interest in learning to fly jets, Boeing aircraft in particular, and asked where they might enroll to train on jets right away. Convinced that the two were either joking or dreaming, the pilot responded that no such school existed. Other instructors who worked with Hasmi and Midar remembered them as poor students who focused on learning to control the aircraft in flight, but took no interest in takeoffs or landings. By the end of May 2000, Hasmi and Midar had given up on learning how to fly. Midar's mind seems to have been with his family back in Yemen, as evidenced by calls he made from the apartment telephone. When news of the birth of his first child arrived, he could stand life in California no longer. In late May and early June of 2000, he closed his bank account, transferred the car registration to Hasmi, and arranged his return to Yemen. According to KSM, he was aboard in San Diego and foresaw no problem in coming back to the United States since he had not overstayed his visa. Hasmi and Modar Abdullah accompanied him to Los Angeles on June 9th. After visiting the King Fod Mosque one last time with his friends, Midar left the country the following day. KSM kept in fairly close touch with his operatives using a variety of methods. When bin Laden called KSM back from Pakistan to Afghanistan of 2000, KSM asked Khalad, whom we introduced in Chapter 5, to maintain email contact with Hasmi in the United States. Midar's decision to strand Hasmi in San Diego enraged KSM, who had not authorized the departure and feared it would compromise the plan. KSM attempted to drop Midar from the plane's operation and would have done so, he says, had he not been overruled by bin Laden. Following Midar's departure, Hasmi grew lonely and worried that he would have trouble managing by himself. He prayed with his housemate each morning at 5 a.m. and attended services at the Islamic Center. He borrowed his housemate's computer for internet access following news coverage of fighting in Chechnya and Bosnia. With his housemate's help, Hasmi also used the internet to search for a wife after obtaining KSM's approval to marry. This search did not succeed, although he developed a close relationship with his housemate. Hasmi preferred not to use the house telephone, continuing the practice he and Midar had adopted of going outside to make phone calls. After Midar left, other students moved into the house. One of these, Yazid al-Sami, stands out. In July 2000, Salmi purchased $4,000 in travelers' checks at a bank in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. On September 5th, Hasmi deposited $1,900 of the travelers' checks into his bank account after withdrawing the same amount in cash. It is possible that Hasmi was simply cashing the travelers' checks for a friend. We do not know. Salmi claims not to remember the transaction. After 9-11, Salmi reportedly confided to Mudar Abdullah that he had previously known terrorist pilot, Hanihan Jure. After living in the same house with Hasmi for about a month, Salmi moved to the La Mesa apartment shared by Abdullah and others. By the fall of 2000, Hasmi no longer even pretended to study English or take flying lessons. Aware that his co-conspirators in Afghanistan and Pakistan would be sending him a new colleague shortly, he bided his time and worked for a few weeks at a gas station in La Mesa where some of his friends, including Abdullah, were employed. On one occasion, Hasmi told a fellow employee that he was planning to find a better job and let slip a prediction that he would become famous. On December 8th, 2000, Hanihan Jure arrived in San Diego, having traveled from Dubai via Paris and Cincinnati. Hasmi likely picked up Hanihan Jure at the airport. We do not know where Hanihan Jure stayed. A few days later, both men left San Diego. Before departing, they visited the gas station in La Mesa where Hasmi reportedly introduced Hanihan Jure as a longtime friend from Saudi Arabia. Hasmi told his housemate that he and his friend Hani were headed for San Jose to take flying lessons and told his friends that he would stay in touch. Hasmi promised to return to San Diego soon and he and Hanihan Jure drove off. Hasmi did not sever all contact with his friends in San Diego. According to Abdullah, after Hasmi left San Diego in December 2000, he telephoned Abdullah twice. In December 2000 or January 2001, Hasmi said he was in San Francisco and would be attending flight school there. About two weeks later, he said he was attending flight school in Arizona. Some evidence, which we will discuss later, indicates that Hasmi contacted Abdullah again in August 2001. In addition, during the month following Hasmi's departure from San Diego, he emailed his housemate three times, including a January 2001 email that Hasmi signed, Samir, an apparent attempt to conceal his identity that struck the housemate as strange at the time. Hasmi also telephoned his housemate that he and his friend had decided to take flight lessons in Arizona and that Medar was now back in Yemen. That was their last contact. When the housemate emailed Hasmi in February and March of 2001 to find out how he was faring, Hasmi did not reply. The housemate who rented the room to Hasmi and Medar during 2000 is an apparently law-abiding citizen with long-standing, friendly contacts among local police and FBI personnel. He did not see anything unusual enough in the behavior of Hasmi or Medar to prompt him to report to his law enforcement contacts. Nor did those contacts ask him for information about his tenants-slash-housemates. End of Chapter 7.1. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Chapter 7.2 of the 9-11 Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. The 9-11 Commission Report. Chapter 7.2. The 9-11 Pilots in the United States. The Hamburg Pilots arrive in the United States. In the early summer of 2000, the Hamburg group arrived in the United States to begin flight training. Marwan Al-Shahi came on May 29th, arriving in Newark on a flight from Brussels. He went to New York City and waited there for Muhammad Atta to join him. On June 2nd, Atta traveled to the Czech Republic by bus from Germany and then flew from Prague to Newark the next day. According to Ramzi Ben-Al-Shib, Atta did not meet with anyone in Prague. He simply believed it would contribute to operational security to fly out of Prague rather than Hamburg, which is a major point for much of his previous international travel. Atta and Shahi had not settled on where they would obtain their flight training. In contrast, Zaya Jara had already arranged to attend the Florida Flight Training Center, FFTC, in Venice, Florida. Jara arrived in Newark on June 27th and then flew to Venice. He immediately began the private pilot program at FFTC, intending to get a multi-engine license. Jara moved in with some of the flight instructors affiliated with his school and bought a car. While Jara quickly settled into training in Florida, Atta and Shahi kept searching for a flight school. After visiting the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, where Zacharias Musawi would enroll several months later and were another Al-Qaeda operative, Ihab Ali had taken lessons in the mid-1990s, Atta started flight instruction at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida and both Atta and Shahi subsequently enrolled in the accelerated pilot program at that school. By the end of July, both of them took solo flights and by mid-August they passed the private pilot airman test. They trained through the summer at Huffman while Jara continued his training at FFTC. The Hamburg operatives paid for their flight training primarily with funds wired from Dubai by KSM's nephew Ali Abdul Aziz Ali. Between June 29 and September 17, 2000, Ali sent Shahi and Atta a total of $114,500 and five transfers, ranging from $5,000 to $70,000. Ali relied on the unremarkable nature of his transactions, which were essentially invisible amid the billions of dollars flowing daily across the globe. Ali was not required to provide identification in sending this money and the aliases he used were not questioned. In mid-September, Atta and Shahi applied to change their immigration status from tourist to student, stating their intention to study at Huffman until September 1, 2001. In late September they decided to enroll at Jones Aviation in Sarasota, Florida about 20 miles north of Venice. According to the instructor at Jones, the two were aggressive, rude, and sometimes even fought with him over the controls during their training flights. In early October, they took the Stage 1 exam for instruments rating at Jones Aviation and failed. Very upset, they said they were in a hurry because jobs awaited them at home. Atta and Shahi then returned to Huffman. In the meantime, Jirah obtained a single-engine private pilot certificate in early August. Having reached that milestone, he departed on the first of five foreign trips he would take after first entering the United States. In October, he flew back to Germany to visit his girlfriend, Isle Senguin. The two traveled to Paris before Jirah returned to Florida on October 29. His relationship with her remained close throughout his time in the United States. In addition to his trips, Jirah made hundreds of phone calls to her and communicated frequently by email. Jirah was supposed to be joined at FFTC by Ramzi Benalshiib, who even sent the school a deposit. But Benalshiib could not obtain a U.S. visa. His first applications in May and June 2000 were denied because he lacked established ties in Germany, ensuring his return from a trip to the United States. In September, he went home to Yemen to apply for a visa from there, but was denied on grounds that he also lacked sufficient ties to Yemen. In October, he tried one last time in Berlin, applying for a student visa to attend Aviation Language School. But the prior denials were noted and this application was denied as well as incomplete. Unable to participate directly in the operation, Benalshiib instead took on the role of coordinating between KSM and the operatives in the United States. Apart from sending a total of about $10,000 in wire transfers to Ata and Shahid during the summer of 2000, one of Benalshiib's first tasks in his new role as plot coordinator was to assist another possible pilot, Sarkarias Musawi. In the fall of 2000, KSM had sent Musawi to Malaysia for flight training, but Musawi did not find a school he liked. He worked instead on other terrorist schemes, such as buying four tons of ammonium nitrate for bombs to be planted on cargo planes flying to the United States. When KSM found out, he recalled Musawi back to Pakistan and directed him to go to the United States for flight training. In early October, Musawi went to London. When Benalshiib visited London in December, he stayed at the same 16-room dormitory where Musawi was still residing. From London, Musawi sent inquiries to the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma. Confronting training or travel problems with Hazmi, Medar, Benalshiib, and Musawi, Al-Qaeda was looking for another possible pilot candidate, a new recruit with just the right background conveniently presented himself in Afghanistan. The fourth pilot, Hani Hanzur. Hani Hanzur from Taif, Saudi Arabia first came to the United States in 1991 to study at the Center for English as a second language at the University of Arizona. He seems to have been a rigorously observant Muslim. According to his older brother, Hani Hanzur went to Afghanistan for the first time in the late 1980s as a teenager to participate in the Jihad. And because the Soviets had already withdrawn, worked for a relief agency there. In 1996, Hanzur returned to the United States to pursue flight training after being rejected by a Saudi flight school. He checked out flight schools in Florida, California, and Arizona, and he briefly started at a couple of them before returning to Saudi Arabia. In 1997, he returned to Florida and then along with two friends went back to Arizona and began his flight training there in earnest. After about three months, Hanzur was able to obtain his private pilot's license. Several more months of training yielded him a commercial pilot certificate issued by the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, and April 1999. He then returned to Saudi Arabia. Hanzur reportedly applied to the Civil Aviation School in Jeddah after returning home, but was rejected. He stayed home for a while and then told his family he was going to the United Arab Emirates to work for an airline. Where Hanzur actually traveled during this time period is unknown. It is possible he went to the training camps in Afghanistan. The fact that Hanzur spent so much time in Arizona may be significant. A number of important Al-Qaeda figures attended the University of Arizona in Tucson or lived in Tucson in the 1980s and early 1990s. Some of Hanzur's known Arizona associates from the time of his flight training in the late 1990s have also raised suspicion. FBI investigators have speculated that Al-Qaeda may have directed other extremist Muslims in the Phoenix area to enroll in aviation training. It is clear that when Hanzur lived in Arizona in the 1990s, he associated with several individuals holding extremist beliefs who have been the subject of counter-terrorism investigations. Some of them trained with Hanzur to be pilots. Others had apparent connections to Al-Qaeda, including training in Afghanistan. By the spring of 2000, Hanzur was back in Afghanistan. According to KSM, Hanzur was sent to him in Karachi for inclusion in the plot after Hanzur was identified in Al-Qaeda's Al-Farouk camp as a trained pilot on the basis of background information he had provided. Hanzur had been at a camp in Afghanistan for a few weeks, when bin Laden or Attef apparently realized that he was a trained pilot. He was told to report to KSM who then trained Hanzur for a few days in the use of code words. On June 20th, Hanzur returned home to Saudi Arabia. He obtained a U.S. student visa on September 25th and told his family he was returning to his job in the UAE. Hanzur did go to the UAE, but to meet facilitator Ali Abdul Aziz Ali. Ali opened a bank account in Dubai for Hanzur and providing the initial funds for his trip. On December 8th, Hanzur traveled to San Diego. His supposed destination was in English as a second language program in Oakland, California, which he had scheduled before leaving Saudi Arabia but never attended. Instead, as mentioned earlier, he joined Nawaf al-Hazmi in San Diego. Hanzur and Hanzur left San Diego almost immediately and drove to Arizona. Settling in Mesa, Hanzur began refresher training at his old school, Arizona Aviation. He wanted to train on multi-engine planes but had difficulties because his English was not good enough. The instructor advised him to discontinue, but Hanzur said he could not go home without completing the training. In early 2001, he started training on a Boeing 737 simulator at Pan Am International Flight Academy in Mesa. An instructor there found his work well below standard and discouraged him from continuing. Again, Hanzur persevered. He completed the initial training at the end of March 2001. At that point, Hanzur and Hanzur vacated their apartment and started driving east, anticipating the arrival of the muscle hijackers, the operatives who would storm the cockpits and control the passengers. By as early as April 4th, Hanzur and Hanzur had arrived in Falls Church, Virginia. The three pilots in Florida continued with their training. Ata and Shahi finished up at Huffman and earned their instrument certificates at the FAA in November. In mid-December 2000, they passed their commercial pilot tests and received their licenses. They then began training to fly large jets on a flight simulator. At about the same time, Jarrah began simulator training, also in Florida, but at a different center. By the end of 2000, less than six months after their arrival, the three pilots on the east coast were simulating flights on large jets. Travels in early 2001. Jarrah, Ata and Shahi, having progressed in their training, all took foreign trips during the holiday period of 2000 to 2001. Jarrah flew through Germany to get home to Beirut. A few weeks later, he returned to Florida via Germany with Isle Sengwin. She stayed with him in Florida for 10 days, even accompanying him to a flight training session. We do not know whether Ata leaders knew about Jarrah's trips and Sengwin's visit. The other operatives had broken off regular contact with their families. At the end of January 2001, Jarrah again flew to Beirut to visit his sick father. After staying there for several weeks, Jarrah visited Sengwin in Germany for a few days before returning to the United States at the end of February. While Jarrah took his personal trips, Ata traveled to Germany in early January 2001 for a progress meeting with Ramsey Ben El-Sheeb. Ben El-Sheeb says Ata told him to report to the Al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan that the three Hamburg pilots had completed their flight training and were awaiting orders. Ata also disclosed that a fourth pilot, Hanzur, had joined Hasmi. Upon returning to Florida, Ata wired Ben El-Sheeb travel money. Ben El-Sheeb proceeded to Afghanistan, made his report, but the next several months there and in Pakistan. When Ata returned to Florida, Shahi left for Morocco, traveling to Casablanca in mid-January. Shahi's family, concerned about not having heard from him, reported him missing to the UAE government. The UAE embassy in turn contacted the Hamburg police, and a UAE representative tried to find him in Germany, visiting Moss and Shahi's last address in Hamburg. After learning that his family was looking for him, Shahi telephoned them on January 20th and said he was still living and studying in Hamburg. The UAE government then told the Hamburg police they could call off the search. Ata and Shahi both encountered some difficulty re-entering the United States on January 10th and January 18th, respectively. Because neither presented a student visa, both of them had to persuade INS inspectors that they should be admitted so that they could continue their flight training. Neither operative had any problem clearing customs. Ata's alleged trip to Prague. Mohamed Ata is known to have been in Prague on two occasions. In December 1994, when he stayed one night at a transit hotel, and in June 2000, when he was en route to the United States, on the latter occasion he arrived by bus from Germany on April 2nd and departed for Newark the following day. The allegation that Ata met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001 originates from the reporting of a single source of the Czech intelligence service. Shortly after 9-11, the source reported having seen Ata meet with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir Alani, an Iraqi diplomat at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague on April 9th, 2001, at 11 a.m. This information was passed to CIA headquarters. The U.S. legal Ata Shea, Legat in Prague, the representative of the FBI, met with the Czech services source. After the meeting, the assessment of Legat and the Czech officers present was that they were 70% sure the source was sincere and believed his own story of the meeting. Subsequently, the Czech intelligence service publicly stated that there was a 70% probability that the meeting between Ata and Ani had taken place. The Czech Interior Minister also made several statements to the press about his belief that the meeting had occurred and the story was widely reported. The FBI has gathered evidence indicating that Ata was in Virginia Beach on April 4th as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo and in Coral Springs, Florida on April 11th, where he and Shehi leased an apartment. On April 6th, 9th, 10th and 11th, Ata's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida. We cannot confirm that he placed those calls, but there are no U.S. records indicating that Ata departed the country during this period. Czech officials have reviewed their flight and border records as well for any indication that Ata was in the Czech Republic in April 2001, including records of anyone crossing the border who even looked Arab. They have also reviewed pictures from the area near the Iraqi Embassy and have not discovered photos of anyone who looked like Ata. No evidence has been found that Ata was in the Czech Republic in April 2001. According to the Czech government, Ani, the Iraqi officer alleged to have met with Ata, was about 70 miles away from Prague on April 8th through 9th and did not return until the afternoon of the 9th while the source was firm that the sighting occurred at 11 a.m. When questioned about the reported April 2001 meeting, Ani, now in custody, has denied ever meeting or having any contact with Ata. Ani says that shortly after 9-11, he became concerned that press stories about the alleged meeting might hurt his career. Hoping to clear his name, Ani asks his superiors to approach the Czech government about refuting the allegation. He also denies knowing of any other Iraqi official having contact with Ata. These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Ata was in Prague on April 9th, 2001. He could have used an alias to travel and a passport under that alias, but this would be an exception to his practice of using his true name while traveling, as he did in January and would in July when he took his next overseas trip. The FBI and CIA have uncovered no evidence that Ata held any fraudulent passports. KSM and Benel Shib both denied that an Ata-Ani meeting occurred. There was no reason for such a meeting, especially considering the risk it would pose to the operation. By April 2001, all four pilots had completed most of their training, and the muscle hijackers were about to begin entering the United States. The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Ata-Ani meeting. After returning to Florida from their trips, Ata and Shehi visited Georgia, staying briefly in Norcross and Decatur, and renting a single-engine plane to fly with an instructor in Lawrenceville. By February 19th, Ata and Shehi were in Virginia. They rented a mailbox in Virginia Beach, cashed a check, and then promptly returned to Georgia, staying in Stone Mountain. We have found no explanation for these travels. In mid-March, Jirá was in Georgia as well, staying in Decatur. There is no evidence that the three pilots met, although Jirá and Ata apparently spoke on the phone. At the end of the month, Jirá left the United States again and visited Singlin in Germany for two weeks. In early April, Ata and Shehi returned to Virginia Beach and closed the mailbox they had opened in February. By the time Ata and Shehi returned to Virginia Beach from their travels in Georgia, Hasmi and Anjur had also arrived in Virginia in Falls Church. They made their way to a large mosque there, the Dar al-Hijra Mosque, sometime in early April. As we mentioned earlier, one of the Imams at this mosque was the same Anwar al-Aliqi with whom Hasmi had spent time at the Rabat Mosque in San Diego. Al-Aliqi had moved to Virginia in January 2001. He remembers Hasmi from San Diego, but is denied having any contact with Hasmi or Anjur in Virginia. At the Dar al-Hijra Mosque, Hasmi and Anjur met a Jordanian named Ayyad al-Rababa. Rababa says he had gone to the mosque to speak to the Imam al-Aliqi about finding work. At the conclusion of services, which normally had 400 to 500 attendees, Rababa says he happened to meet Hasmi and Anjur. They were looking for an apartment. Rababa referred them to a friend who had one to rent. Hasmi and Anjur moved into the apartment, which was in Alexandria. Some FBI investigators doubt Rababa's story. Some agents suspect that al-Aliqi may have tasked Rababa to help Hasmi and Anjur. We share that suspicion, given the remarkable coincidence of al-Aliqi's prior relationship with Hasmi. As noted above, the commission was unable to locate an interview al-Aliqi. Rababa has been deported to Jordan, having been convicted after 9-11 in a fraudulent driver's license scheme. Rababa, who had lived in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, told investigators that he had recommended Patterson, New Jersey as a place with an Arabic-speaking community where Hasmi and Anjur might want to settle. They asked for his help in getting them an apartment in Patterson. Rababa tried without success. He says he then suggested that Hasmi and Anjur settle with him to Connecticut, where they could look for a place to live. On May 8th, Rababa went to Hasmi and Anjur's apartment to pick them up for the trip to Connecticut. There he says he found them with new roommates, Ahmad al-Gamadi and Majed Mokad. These two men had been sent to America to serve as muscle hijackers, and had arrived at Dallas Airport on May 2nd. Rababa drove Anjur to Fairfield, Connecticut, followed by Hasmi, who had Mokad and Gamadi in his car. After a short stay in Connecticut where they apparently called Area Flight Schools and real estate agents, Rababa drove the four to Patterson to have dinner and show them around. He says that they returned with him to Fairfield that night and that he never saw them again. Within a few weeks, Anjur, Hasmi, and several other operatives moved to Patterson and rented a one-room apartment. When their landlord later paid a visit, he found six men living there. Af al-Hasmi, now joined by his younger brother Salim, Anjur, Mokad, probably Ahmad al-Gamadi and Abdul Aziz al-Amari, Hasmi's old friend Khalid al-Midar would soon join them. Atta and Shahi had already returned to Florida. On April 11th, they moved into an apartment in Coral Springs. Atta stayed in Florida awaiting the arrival of the first muscle hijackers. Shahi, on the other hand, bought a ticket to Cairo and flew there from Miami on April 18th. We do not know much more about Shahi's reason for traveling to Egypt in April than we know about his January trip to Morocco. Shahi did meet with Atta's father, who stated in a post-911 interview that Shahi just wanted to pick up Atta's international driver's license and some money. This story is not credible. Atta already had the license with him and presented it during a traffic stop on April 26th while Shahi was still abroad. Shahi spent about two weeks in Egypt, obviously more time than would have been needed just to meet with Atta's father. Shahi could have traveled elsewhere during this time, but no records indicating additional travel have been discovered. Shahi returned to Miami on May 2nd. That day, Atta and Jarrah were together about 30 miles to the north, visiting a Department of Motor Vehicles office in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida to get Florida driver's licenses. Back in Virginia, Hasmi and Hanjur were about to leave for Connecticut and New Jersey. As the summer approached, the lead operatives were settled in Florida and New Jersey, waiting for the rest of their contingent to join them. End of Chapter 7.2 Recording by Leanne Howlett.