 Chapter 2.2 of the 9-11 Commission Report. It is the story of eccentric and violent ideas sprouting in the fertile ground of political and social turmoil. It is the story of an organization poised to seize its historical moment. How did bin Laden, with his call for the indiscriminate killing of Americans, win thousands of followers and some degree of approval for millions more? The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which bin Laden has shaped and spread his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam's past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to the Holy Qur'an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources, Islam, history, and the region's political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He invited against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam's holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested U.S. support of Israel. Islam, a word that literally means surrender to the will of God, arose in Arabia with what Muslims believe are a series of revelations to the Prophet Muhammad from the one and only God, the God of Abraham and of Jesus. These revelations conveyed by the angel Gabriel are recorded in the Qur'an. Muslims believe that these revelations, given to the greatest and last of a chain of prophets stretching from Abraham through Jesus, completes God's message to humanity. The hadith, which recounts Muhammad's sayings and deeds as recorded by his contemporaries, are another fundamental source. A third key element is the sharia, a code of law derived from the Qur'an and the hadith. Islam is divided into two branches, Sunni and Shia. Soon after the Prophet's death, the question of choosing a new leader, or Caliph, for the Muslim community, or Ummah, arose. Initially, his successors could be drawn from the Prophet's contemporaries, but with time this was no longer possible. Those who became the Shia, held that any leader of the Ummah must be a direct descendant of the Prophet. Those who became Sunni argued that lineal dissent was not required if the candidate met other standards of faith and knowledge. After bloody struggles, the Sunni became and remained the majority sect. The Shia are dominant in Iran. The Caliphate, the institutionalized leadership of the Ummah, thus was a Sunni institution that continued until 1924, first under Arab and eventually under Ottoman Turkish control. Many Muslims look back at the century after the revelations to the Prophet Muhammad as a golden age. Its memory is strongest among the Arabs. What happened then, the spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and even into Europe, within less than a century, seemed and seems miraculous. Nostalgia for Islam's past glory remains a powerful force. Islam is both a faith and a code of conduct for all aspects of life. For many Muslims, a good government would be one guided by the moral principles of their faith. This does not necessarily translate into a desire for clerical rule and the abolition of a secular state. It does mean that some Muslims tend to be uncomfortable with distinctions between religion and state, though Muslim rulers throughout history have readily separated the two. To extremists, however, such divisions, as well as the existence of parliaments and legislation, only prove these rulers to be false Muslims usurping God's authority over all aspects of life. Periodically, the Islamic world has seen surges of what, for want of a better term, is often labeled fundamentalism. Denouncing waywardness among the faithful, some clerics have appealed for a return to observance of the literal teachings of the Quran and the Hadith. One scholar from the 14th century, from whom Bin Laden selectively quotes, Ibn Tamia, condemn both corrupt rulers and the clerics who fail to criticize them. He urged Muslims to read the Quran and the Hadith for themselves, not depend solely on learning interpreters like himself, but to hold one another to account for the quality of their observance. The extreme Islamic version of history blames the decline from Islam's golden age on the rulers and people who turned away from the true path of their religion, thereby leaving Islam vulnerable to encroaching foreign powers eager to steal their land, wealth, and even their souls. Bin Laden's World View Despite his claims to universal leadership, Bin Laden offers an extreme view of Islamic history designed to appeal mainly to Arabs and Sunnis. He draws on fundamentalists who blame the eventual destruction of the caliphate on leaders who abandon the pure path of religious devotion. He repeatedly calls on his followers to embrace martyrdom, since the walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets. For those yearning for a lost sense of order in an older, more tranquil world, he offers his caliphate as an imagined alternative to today's uncertainty. For others he offers simplistic conspiracies to explain their world. Bin Laden also relies heavily on the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood executed in 1966 on charges of attempting to overthrow the government, Qutb mixed Islamic scholarship with a very superficial acquaintance with Western history and thought. Sent by the Egyptian government to study in the United States in the late 1940s, Qutb returned with an enormous loathing of Western society and history. He dismissed Western achievements as entirely material, arguing that Western society possesses nothing that will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence. Three basic themes emerge from Qutb's writing. He claimed that the world was beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief. A condition he called jahlia, the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the revelations given to the Prophet Muhammad. Qutb argued that humans can choose only between Islam and jahlia. Second, he warned that more people, including Muslims, were attracted to jahlia and its material comforts than to his view of Islam. Jahlia could therefore triumph over Islam. Third, no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims, as he defined them, therefore, must take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction. Bin Laden shares Qutb's stark view, permitting him and his followers to rationalize even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defense of an embattled faith. Many Americans have wondered, why do they hate us? Some also ask, what can we do to stop these attacks? Bin Laden and al-Qaeda have given answers to both these questions. To the first, they say that Americans had attacked Islam. America is responsible for all conflicts involving Muslims. Thus Americans are blamed when Israelis fight with Palestinians, when Russians fight with Chechnians, when Indians fight with Kashmiri Muslims, and when the Philippine government fights ethnic Muslims in its southern islands. America is also held responsible for the governments of Muslim countries derided by al-Qaeda as your agents. Bin Laden has stated flatly, our fight against these governments is not separate from our fight against you. These charges found a ready audience among millions of Arabs and Muslims angry at the United States because of issues ranging from Iraq to Palestine to America's support for their country's repressive rulers. Bin Laden's grievance with the United States may have started in reaction to specific US policies, but it quickly became far deeper. To the second question, what America could do, al-Qaeda's answer was that America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture. It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind. If the United States did not comply, it would be at war with the Islamic nation, a nation that al-Qaeda's leaders said desires death more than you desire life. Historical and political context. Few fundamentalist movements in the Islamic world gained lasting political power. In the 19th and 20th centuries, fundamentalists helped articulate anti-colonial grievances, but played little role in the overwhelmingly secular struggles for independence after World War I. Western-educated lawyers, soldiers, and officers led most independence movements, and clerical influence and traditional culture were seen as obstacles to national progress. After gaining independence from Western powers following World War II, the Arab Middle East followed an arc from initial pride and optimism to today's mix of indifference, cynicism, and despair. In several countries, a dynastic state already existed or was quickly established under a Paramount tribal family. Monarchies in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Jordan still survive today. Those in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen were eventually overthrown by secular, nationalist revolutionaries. The secular regimes promised a glowing future, often tied to sweeping ideologies, such as those promoted by Egyptian President Gamil Abdel Nassar's Arab Socialism, or the Bath Party of Syria and Iraq, that call for a single secular Arab state. However, what emerged were almost invariably autocratic regimes that were usually unwilling to tolerate any opposition, even in countries such as Egypt that had a parliamentary tradition. Over time, their policies, repression, rewards, immigration, and the displacement of popular anger into scapegoats, generally foreign, were shaped by the desire to cling to power. The bankruptcy of secular autocratic nationalism was evident across the Muslim world by the late 1970s. At the same time, these regimes had closed off nearly all paths for peaceful opposition, forcing their critics to choose silence, exile, or violent opposition. Iran's 1979 revolution swept the Shia theocracy into power. Its success encouraged Sunni fundamentalists elsewhere. In the 1980s, a wash-and-sudden oil wealth, Saudi Arabia competed with Shia Iran to promote its Sunni fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism. The Saudi government, always conscious of its duties as a custodian of Islam's holiest places, joined with wealthy Arabs from the Kingdom and other states bordering the Persian Gulf in donating money to build mosque and religious schools that could preach and teach their interpretation of Islamic doctrine. In this competition for legitimacy, secular regimes had no alternative to offer. Instead, in a number of cases, their rulers sought to buy off local Islamist movements by ceding control of many social and educational issues. In Bolden, rather than satisfied, the Islamists continued to push for power, a trend especially clear in Egypt. Confronted with a violent Islamist movement that killed President Anwar Sadat in 1981, the Egyptian government combined harsh repression of Islamic militants with harassment of modern Islamic scholars and authors, driving many into exile. In Pakistan, a military regime sought to justify its seizure of power by a pious public stance and an abrasive, unprecedented Islamic influence on education and society. These experiments in political Islam faltered during the 1990s. The Iranian Revolution lost momentum, prestige and public support, and Pakistan's rulers found that most of its population had little enthusiasm for fundamentalist Islam. Both revival movements gained followers across the Muslim world, but failed to secure political power except in Iran and Sudan. In Algeria, where in 1991 Islamists seemed almost certain to win power through the ballot box, the military preempted their victory, triggering a brutal civil war that continues today. Opponents of today's rulers have few, if anyways, to participate in the existing political system. They are thus a ready audience for calls to Muslims to purify their society, reject unwelcome modernization, and adhere strictly to the Sharia. Social and Economic Malaise In the 1970s and early 1980s, an unprecedented flood of wealth led the then largely unmodernized oil states to attempt to shortcut decades of development. They funded huge infrastructure projects, vastly expanded education, and created subsidized social welfare programs. These programs established a widespread feeling of entitlement without a corresponding sense of social obligation. By the late 1980s, diminishing oil revenues, the economic drain from many unprofitable development projects, and population growth made these entitlement programs unsustainable. The resulting cutbacks created enormous resentment among recipients who had come to see government largesse as their right. This resentment was further stoked by public understanding of how much oil income had gone directly into the pockets of the rulers, their friends, and their helpers. Unlike the oil states, or Afghanistan, where real economic development has barely begun, the other Arab states and Pakistan once had seen headed towards balanced modernization. The established commercial, financial, and industrial sectors in these states, supported by an entrepreneurial spirit and widespread understanding of free enterprise, augured well. But unprofitable heavy industry, state monopolies, and opaque bureaucracies slowly stifled growth. More importantly, these state-centered regimes placed their highest priority on preserving the elite's grip on national wealth. According to foster dynamic economies that could create jobs attractive to educated young men, the countries became economically stagnant and reliant on the safety valve of worker emigration either to the Arab oil states or to the West. Furthermore, the repression and isolation of women in many Muslim countries have not only seriously limited individual opportunity, but also crippled overall economic productivity. By the 1990s, high birth rates and declining rates of infant mortality had produced a common problem throughout the Muslim world. A large, steadily increasing population of young men without any reasonable expectation of suitable or steady employment, assured prescription for social turbulence. Many of these young men, such as the enormous number trained only in religious schools, lack the skills needed by their societies. Far more acquired valuable skills but lived in stagnant economies that could not generate satisfying jobs. Millions, pursuing secular as well as religious studies, were products of educational systems that generally devoted little, if any, attention to the rest of the world's thought, history and culture. The secular education reflected a strong cultural preference for technical fields over the humanities and social sciences. Many of these young men, even if able to study abroad, lacked a perspective and skills needed to understand a different culture. Frustrated in their search for a decent living, unable to benefit from an education often obtained at the cost of great family sacrifice and blocked from starting families of their own, some of these young men were easy targets for radicalization. Bin Laden's historical opportunity. Most Muslims prefer a peaceful and inclusive vision of their faith, not the violent sectarianism of Bin Laden. Among Arabs, Bin Laden's followers are commonly nicknamed tech-fairy, or those who define other Muslims as unbelievers because of their readiness to demonize and murder those with whom they disagree. Beyond the theology lies a simple human fact that most Muslims, like most other human beings, are repelled by mass murder and barbarism, whatever their justification. All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true face of Islam, President Bush observed. Islam is a faith that brings comfort to billions of people around the world. It's a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race. It's a faith based on love, not hate. Yet as political, social, and economic problems create flammable societies, Bin Laden used Islam's most extremist fundamentalist traditions as its match. All these elements, including religion, combined in an explosive compound. Other extremists had and have followings of their own. But in appealing to societies full of discontent, Bin Laden remained credible as other leaders and symbols failed. He could stand as a symbol of resistance, above all resistance to the West and to America. He could present himself and his allies as victorious warriors in the one great successful experience for Islamic militancy in the 1980s, the Afghan Jihad against the Soviet occupation. By 1998, Bin Laden had a distinctive appeal as he focused on attacking America. He argued that other extremists who aimed at local rulers or Israel did not go far enough. They had not taken on what he called the head of the snake. Finally, Bin Laden had another advantage, a substantial worldwide organization. By the time he issued his February 1998 declaration of war, Bin Laden had nurtured that organization for nearly 10 years. He could attract, train, and use recruits for evermore ambitious attacks, rallying new adherents with each demonstration that his was the movement of the future. CHAPTER 2.3 The Rise of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda 1988 through 1992. A decade of conflict in Afghanistan, from 1979 to 1989, gave Islamist extremists a rallying point and training field. A communist government in Afghanistan gained power in 1978, but was unable to establish enduring control. At the end of 1979, the Soviet government sent in military units to ensure that the country would remain securely under Moscow's influence. The response was an Afghan national resistance movement that defeated Soviet forces. Young Muslims from around the world flocked to Afghanistan to join his volunteers in what was seen as a holy war, Jihad, against an invader. The largest numbers came from the Middle East. Some were Saudis and among them was Usama Bin Laden. 23 when he arrived in Afghanistan in 1980, Bin Laden was the 17th of 57 children of a Saudi construction magnate. Six feet five and thin, Bin Laden appeared to be ungainly, but was in fact quite athletic. Skilled as a horseman, runner, climber, and soccer player, he had attended Abu Aziz University in Saudi Arabia. By some accounts he had been interested there in religious studies, inspired by tape recordings of fiery sermons by Abdullah Azam, a Palestinian and a disciple of Kutub. Bin Laden was conspicuous among the volunteers, not because he showed evidence of religious learning, but because he had access to some of his family's huge fortune. Though he took part in at least one actual battle, he became known chiefly as a person who generously helped fund the anti-Soviet Jihad. Bin Laden understood better than most of the volunteers the extent to which the continuation and eventual success of the Jihad in Afghanistan depended on an increasingly complex, almost worldwide organization. This organization included a financial support network that came to be known as the Golden Chain, put together mainly by financiers in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. Donations flowed through charities or other non-governmental organizations, NGOs. Bin Laden and the Afghan Arabs drew largely on funds raised by this network, whose agents roamed the world markets to buy arms and supplies for the Mujahideen or holy warriors. Mosques, schools, and boarding houses served as recruiting stations in many parts of the world, including the United States. Some were set up by Islamic extremists or their financial backers. Bin Laden had an important part in this activity. He and the cleric Azam had joined in creating a Bureau of Services, Metabakhidmat, or M.A.K., which channeled recruits into Afghanistan. The international environment for Bin Laden's efforts was ideal. Saudi Arabia and the United States supplied billions of dollars' worth of secret assistance to rebel groups in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. This assistance was funneled through Pakistan, the Pakistani military intelligence service, Inner Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISID, helped train the rebels and distribute the arms. But Bin Laden and his comrades had their own sources of support and training, and they received little or no assistance from the United States. April 1988 brought victory for the Afghan Jihad. Moscow declared it would pull its military forces out of Afghanistan within the next nine months. As the Soviets began their withdrawal, the Jihad's leaders debated what to do next. Bin Laden and Azam agreed that the organization successfully created for Afghanistan should not be allowed to dissolve. They established what they called a base or foundation, Al-Qaeda, as a potential general headquarters for future Jihad. Though Azam had been considered number one in the MAK, by August 1988 Bin Laden was clearly the leader, Amir of Al-Qaeda. This organization's structure included as its operating arms and intelligence component, a military committee, a financial committee, a political committee, and the committee in charge of media affairs and propaganda. It also had an advisory council, Shura, made up of Bin Laden's inner circle. Bin Laden's assumption of the helm of Al-Qaeda was evidence of his growing self-confidence and ambition. He soon made clear his desire for unchallenged control and for preparing the Mujahideen to fight anywhere in the world. Azam, by contrast, favored continuing to fight in Afghanistan until it had a true Islamist government, and, as a Palestinian, he saw Israel as the top priority for the next stage. Whether the dispute was about power, personal differences, or strategy, it ended on November 24, 1989, when a remotely controlled car bomb killed Azam and both of his sons. The killers were assumed to be rival Egyptians. The outcome left Bin Laden indisputably in charge of what remained of the MAK and Al-Qaeda. Through writers like Khutib and the presence of the Egyptian Islamist teachers in the Saudi educational system, Islamists already had a strong intellectual influence on Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda colleagues. By the late 1980s, the Egyptian Islamist movement, badly battered in the government crackdown following President Sadat's assassination, was centered in two major organizations, the Islamic Group and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. A spiritual guide for both, but especially the Islamic Group, was the so-called blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman. His preaching had inspired the assassination of Sadat. After being in and out of Egyptian prisons during the 1980s, Abdel Rahman found refuge in the United States. From his headquarters in Jersey City, he distributed messages calling for the murder of unbelievers. The most important Egyptian in Bin Laden's circle was a surgeon, Ayman Al-Zawari, who led a strong faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Many of his followers became important members in the new organization, and his own close ties with Bin Laden led many to think of him as the deputy head of Al-Qaeda. He would, in fact, become Bin Laden's deputy some years later when they merged their organizations. Bin Laden moves to Sudan. By the fall of 1989, Bin Laden had sufficient stature among Islamic extremists that a Sudanese political leader, Hassan al-Turabi, urged him to transplant his whole organization to Sudan. Turabi headed the National Islamic Front in a coalition that had recently seized power in Khartoum. Bin Laden agreed to help Turabi in an ongoing war against African Christian separatists in southern Sudan, and also to do some road building. Turabi, in return, would let Bin Laden use Sudan as a base for worldwide business operations and for preparations for a Jihad. While agents of Bin Laden began to buy property in Sudan in 1990, Bin Laden himself moved from Afghanistan back to Saudi Arabia. In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Bin Laden, whose efforts in Afghanistan had earned him celebrity and respect, proposed to the Saudi monarchy that he summoned Mujahideen for a Jihad to retake Kuwait. He was rebuffed, and the Saudis joined the US-led coalition. After the Saudis agreed to allow US armed forces to be based in the kingdom, Bin Laden and a number of Islamic clerics began to publicly denounce the arrangement. The Saudi government exiled the clerics and undertook to silence Bin Laden by, among other things, taking away his passport. With help from a dissident member of the royal family, he managed to get out of the country under the pretext of attending an Islamic gathering in Pakistan in April 1991. By 1994, the Saudi government would freeze his financial assets and revoke his citizenship. He no longer had a country he could call his own. Bin Laden moved to Sudan in 1991 and set up a large and complex set of intertwined business and terrorist enterprises. In time, the former would encompass numerous companies and the global network of bank accounts and non-governmental institutions. Fulfilling his bargain with Turabi, Bin Laden used his construction company to build a new highway from Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda finance officers and top operatives used their positions in Bin Laden's business to acquire weapons, explosives, and technical equipment for terrorist purposes. One founding member, Abu Hadjir al-Araqi, used his position as head of a Bin Laden investment company to carry out procurement trips from Western Europe to the Far East. Two others, Wadi al-Hagi and Mubarak Dury, who had become acquainted in Tucson, Arizona in the late 1980s, went as far afield as China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Belarus. Bin Laden's impressive array of offices covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activities. The network included a major business enterprise in Cyprus, a services branch in Zagreb, an office of the Benevolence International Foundation in Sarajevo, which supported the Bosnian Muslims in their conflict with Serbia and Croatia, and an NGO in Baku, Azerbaijan, that was employed as well by Egyptian Islamic Jihad, both as a source and conduit for finances and as a support center for the Muslim rebels in Chechnya. He also made use of the already established Third World Relief Agency, TWRA, headquartered in Vienna, whose branch office locations included Zagreb and Budapest. Bin Laden later set up an NGO in Nairobi as a cover for operatives there. Bin Laden now had a vision of himself as head of an international Jihad confederation. In Sudan, he established an Islamic Army Shura that was to serve as the coordinating body for the consortium of terrorist groups with which he was forging alliances. It was composed of his own al-Qaeda Shura together with leaders or representatives of terrorist organizations that were still independent. In building this Islamic army, he enlisted groups from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Oman, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea. Al-Qaeda also established cooperative, but less formal relationships with other extremist groups from these same countries, from the African states of Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Uganda, and from the Southeast Asian states of Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Bin Laden maintained connections in the Bosnian conflict as well. The groundwork for a true global terrorist network was being laid. Bin Laden also provided equipment and training assistance to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines and also to a newly formed Philippine group that called itself the Abu Sayyaf Brigade after one of the major Afghan Jihadist commanders. Al-Qaeda helped Jemai Islamia, J.I., a nascent organization headed by Indonesian Islamists, with cells scattered across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It also aided a Pakistani group engaged in insurrectionist attacks in Kashmir. In mid-1991, Bin Laden dispatched a band of supporters to the northern Afghanistan border to assist the Tajikistan Islamists in the ethnic conflicts that had been boiling there even before the Central Asian departments of the Soviet Union had become independent states. This pattern of expansion through building alliances extended to the United States. A Muslim organization called Al-Qifa had numerous branch offices, the largest of which was in the Faroq Mosque in Brooklyn. In the mid-1980s it had been set up as one of the first outposts of Azam and Bin Laden's MAK. Other cities with branches of Al-Qifa included Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Tucson. Al-Qifa recruited American Muslims to fight in Afghanistan. Some of them would participate in terrorist actions in the United States in the early 1990s and in al-Qaeda's operations elsewhere, including the 1998 attacks on US embassies in East Africa. End of chapter 2.3. Chapter 2.4 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. The 9-11 commission report, chapter 2.4, building an organization declaring war on the United States, 1992 through 1996. Bin Laden began delivering diatribes against the United States before he left Saudi Arabia. He continued to do so after he arrived in Sudan. In early 1992, the al-Qaeda leadership issued a fatwa calling for jihad against the Western occupation of Islamic lands, specifically singling out US forces for attack. The language resembled that which would appear in Bin Laden's public fatwa in August 1996. In ensuing weeks, Bin Laden delivered an often repeated lecture on the need to cut off the head of the snake. By this time, Bin Laden was well known and a senior figure among Islamist extremists, especially those in Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Still, he was just one among many diverse terrorist barons. Some of Bin Laden's close comrades were more peers in subordinates. For example, Usama Asmura, also known as Wali Khan, worked with Bin Laden in the early 1980s and helped him in the Philippines and in Tajikistan. The Egyptian spiritual guide based in New Jersey, the blind sheik, whom Bin Laden admired, was also in the network. Among sympathetic peers in Afghanistan were a few of the warlords still fighting for power and Abu Zubayda, who helped operate a popular terrorist training camp near the border with Pakistan. There were also rootless but experienced operatives, such as Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who, though not necessarily formal members of someone else's organization, were traveling around the world and joining in projects that were supported by or linked to Bin Laden, the blind sheik, or their associates. In now analyzing the terrorist programs carried out by members of this network, it would be misleading to apply the label al-Qaeda operations too often in these early years. Yet it would also be misleading to ignore the significance of these connections. And in this network, Bin Laden's agenda stood out. While his allied Islamist groups were focused on local battles, such as those in Egypt, Algeria, Bosnia, or Chechnya, Bin Laden concentrated on attacking the far enemy, the United States. Attacks known and suspected. After US troops deployed to Somalia in late 1992, al-Qaeda leaders formulated a fatwa demanding their eviction. In December, bombs exploded at two hotels in Aden where US troops routinely stopped and rode to Somalia, killing two but no Americans. The perpetrators are reported to have belonged to a group from southern Yemen headed by a Yemeni member of Bin Laden's Islamic army, Shura, some in the group had trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Sudan. Al-Qaeda leaders set up an Nairobi cell and used it to send weapons and training to the Somali warlords battling US forces, an operation directly supervised by al-Qaeda's military leader. Scores of trainers flowed to Somalia over the ensuing months, including most of the senior members and weapons training experts of al-Qaeda's military committee. These trainers were later heard boasting that their assistance led to the October 1993 shootdown of two US Black Hawk helicopters by members of the Somali militia group and to the subsequent withdrawal of US forces in early 1994. In November of 1995, a car bomb exploded outside of Saudi US joint facility in Riyadh for training the Saudi National Guard. Five Americans and two officials from India were killed. The Saudi government arrested four perpetrators who admitted being inspired by Bin Laden. They were promptly executed. Though nothing proves that Bin Laden ordered this attack, US intelligence subsequently learned that al-Qaeda leaders had decided a year earlier to attack a US target in Saudi Arabia and had shipped explosives to the peninsula for this purpose. Some of Bin Laden's associates later took credit. In June 1996, an enormous truck bomb detonated in the Kobar Tower's residential complex in Dharan, Saudi Arabia that housed US Air Force personnel. 19 Americans were killed and 372 were wounded. The operation was carried out principally, perhaps exclusively, by Saadi Hezbollah, an organization that had received support from the government of Iran. While the evidence of Iranian involvement is strong, there are also signs that al-Qaeda played some role as yet unknown. In this period, other prominent attacks in which Bin Laden's involvement is at best cloudy are the 1993 bombings of the World Trade Center, a plot that same year to destroy landmarks in New York, and the 1995 Manila air plot to blow up a dozen US airliners over the Pacific. Details on these plots appear in Chapter 3. Another scheme revealed that Bin Laden sought the capability to kill on a mass scale. His business aides received word that a Sudanese military officer, who had been a member of the previous government cabinet, was offering to sell weapons-grade uranium. After a number of contacts were made through intermediaries, the officer set the price at $1.5 million, which did not deter Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda representatives asked to inspect the uranium and were shown a cylinder of about three feet long, and one thought he could pronounce it genuine. Al-Qaeda apparently purchased the cylinder, then discovered it to be bogus. But while the effort failed, it shows what Bin Laden and his associates hoped to do. One of the Al-Qaeda representatives explained his mission. It's easy to kill more people with uranium. Bin Laden seemed willing to include in the confederation terrorists from almost every corner of the Muslim world. His vision mirrored that of Sudan's Islamist leader, Taurabi, who convened a series of meetings under the label Popular Arab in Islamic Conference around the time of Bin Laden's arrival in that country. Delegations of violent Islamist extremists came from all the groups represented in Bin Laden's Islamic Army Shura. Representatives also came from organizations such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Taurabi sought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisions and join against the common enemy. In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between Al-Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support, even if only training, for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior Al-Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training and explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Beka Valley in Lebanon for further training and explosives, as well as in intelligence and security. Bin Laden reportedly showed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. The relationship between Al-Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations. As will be described in Chapter 7, Al-Qaeda contacts with Iran continued in ensuing years. Bin Laden was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda, save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against crusaders during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Laden had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan and sought to attract them into his Islamic army. To protect his own ties with Iraq, Tarabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Laden would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Laden apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq, Kurdistan, outside of Baghdad's control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Laden's help, they reformed into an organization called Ansar al-Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime has been tolerated and may have even helped Ansar al-Islam against the common Kurdish enemy. With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Laden himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Laden is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request. As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections. Sudan becomes a doubtful haven. Not until 1998 did al-Qaeda undertake a major terrorist operation of its own, in large part because Bin Laden lost his base in Sudan. Ever since the Islamist regime came to power in Khartoum, the United States and other Western governments had pressed it to stop providing a haven for terrorist organizations. Other governments in the region, such as those of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and even Libya, which were targets of some of these groups, added their own pressure. At the same time, the Sudanese regime began to change. Though Tarabi had been its inspirational leader, General Omar al-Lashir, President since 1989, had never been entirely under his thumb. Thus, as outside pressures mounted, Bashir's supporters began to displace those of Tarabi. The attempted assassination in Ethiopia of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in June 1995 appears to have been a tipping point. The would-be killers who came from the Egyptian Islamic group had been sheltered in Sudan and helped by Bin Laden. When the Sudanese refused to hand over three individuals identified as involved in the assassination plot, the UN Security Council passed a resolution criticizing their inaction and eventually sanctioned Khartoum in April 1996. A clear signal to Bin Laden that his days in Sudan were numbered came when the government advised him that it intended to yield to Libya's demands to stop giving sanctuary to its enemies. Bin Laden had to tell the Libyans who had been part of his Islamic army that he could no longer protect them and that they had to leave the country. Outraged, several Libyan members of al-Qaeda and the Islamic army shura were announced all connections with him. Bin Laden also began to have serious money problems. International pressure on Sudan, together with strains in the world economy, hurt Sudan's currency. Some of Bin Laden's companies ran short of funds. As Sudanese authorities became less obliging, normal costs of doing business increased. Saudi pressures on the Bin Laden family also probably took some toll. In any case, Bin Laden found it necessary both to cut back his spending and to control his outlays more closely. He appointed a new financial manager whom his followers saw as miserly. Money problems proved costly to Bin Laden in other ways. Jamal Ahmed al-Fadal, a Sudanese-born Arab, had spent time in the United States and had been recruited for the Afghan war through the Farooq mosque in Brooklyn. He had joined al-Qaeda and taken the oath of fealty to Bin Laden, serving as one of his business agents. Then Bin Laden discovered that Fadal had skimmed about $110,000 and he asked for restitution. Fadal resented receiving a salary of only $500 a month, while some of the Egyptians in al-Qaeda were given $1,200 a month. He defected and became a star informant for the United States. Also testifying about al-Qaeda in a U.S. court was Losein Kirchu, who told of breaking with Bin Laden because of Bin Laden's professed inability to provide him with money when his wife needed a Caesarean section. In February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching officials from the United States and other governments, asking what actions of theirs might ease foreign pressure. In secret meetings with Saudi officials, Sudan offered to expel Bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S. officials became aware of these secret discussions certainly by March. Saudi officials apparently wanted Bin Laden expelled from Sudan. They had already revoked his citizenship, however, and would not tolerate his presence in their country. And Bin Laden may have no longer felt safe in Sudan, where he had already escaped at least one assassination attempt that he believed to have been the work of the Egyptian or Saudi regimes, or both. In any case, on May 19th, 1996, Bin Laden left Sudan, significantly weakened, despite his ambitions and organizational skills. He returned to Afghanistan. End of chapter 2.4, recording by Alex Tkobi. Chapter 2.5 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 Corey Snow. The 9-11 Commission Report. Chapter 2.5. 2.5, Al Qaeda's Renewal in Afghanistan. 1996 to 1998. Bin Laden flew on a leased aircraft from Khartoum to Jalalabad with a refueling stopover in the United Arab Emirates. He was accompanied by family members and bodyguards, as well as by Al Qaeda members who had been close associates since his organization's 1988 founding in Afghanistan. Dozens of additional militants arrived on later flights. Though Bin Laden's destination was Afghanistan, Pakistan was the nation that held the key to his ability to use Afghanistan as a base from which to revive his ambitious enterprise for war against the United States. For the first quarter-century of its existence as a nation, Pakistan's identity had derived from Islam, but its politics had been decidedly secular. The army was, and remains, the country's strongest and most respected institution, and the army had been and continues to be preoccupied with its rivalry with India, especially over the disputed territory of Kashmir. From the 1970s onward, religion had become an increasingly powerful force in Pakistani politics. After a coup in 1977, military leaders turned to Islamist groups for support, and fundamentalists became more prominent. South Asia had an indigenous form of Islamic fundamentalism, which had developed in the 19th century at a school in the Indian village of Dioband. The influence of the Wahhabi school of Islam had also grown, nurtured by Saudi-funded institutions. Moreover, the fighting in Afghanistan made Pakistan home to an enormous, and generally unwelcome, population of Afghan refugees. And since the badly strained Pakistani education system could not accommodate the refugees, the government increasingly let privately funded religious schools serve as a cost-free alternative. Over time, these schools produced large numbers of half-educated young men with no marketable skills, but with deeply held Islamic views. Pakistan's rulers found these multitudes of ardent young Afghans, a source of potential trouble at home, but potentially useful abroad. Those who joined the Taliban movement, espousing a ruthless version of Islamic law, perhaps could bring order in chaotic Afghanistan and make it a cooperative ally. They thus might give Pakistan greater security on one of the several borders where Pakistani military officers hoped for what they called, quote, strategic depth, unquote. It is unlikely that Bin Laden could have returned to Afghanistan had Pakistan disapproved. The Pakistani military intelligence service probably had advanced knowledge of his coming, and its officers may have facilitated his travel. During his entire time in Sudan, he had maintained guest houses and training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These were part of a larger network used by diverse organizations for recruiting and training fighters for Islamic insurgencies in such places as Tajikistan, Kashmir and Chechnya. Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced Bin Laden to Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base of power, and his reassertion of control over camps near Khaust out of an apparent hope that he would now expand the camps and make them available for training Kashmiri militants. Yet Bin Laden was in his weakest position since his early days in the war against the Soviet Union. The Sudanese government had canceled the registration of the main business enterprises he had set up there and then put some of them up for public sale. According to a senior al-Qaeda detainee, the government of Sudan seized everything Bin Laden had possessed there. He also lost the head of his military committee, Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri, one of the most capable and popular leaders of al-Qaeda. While most of the group's key figures had accompanied Bin Laden to Afghanistan, Banshiri had remained in Kenya to oversee the training and weapons shipments of the cell set up some four years earlier. He died in a ferry boat accident on Lake Victoria just a few days after Bin Laden arrived in Jalalabad, leaving Bin Laden with a need to replace him not only in the Shura, but also as a supervisor of the cells and prospective operations in East Africa. He had to make other adjustments as well for some al-Qaeda members viewed Bin Laden's return to Afghanistan as occasioned to go off in their own directions. Some maintained collaborative relationships with al-Qaeda but many disengaged entirely. For a time it may not have been clear to Bin Laden that the Taliban would be his best bet as an ally. When he arrived in Afghanistan, they controlled much of the country but key centers, including Qaboo, were still held by rival warlords. Bin Laden went initially to Jalalabad, probably because it was in an area controlled by a provincial council of Islamic leaders who were not major contenders for national power. He found lodgings with Yunus Khalis, the head of one of the main Mujahideen factions. Bin Laden apparently kept his options open, maintaining contacts with Gulbuddin Haqmatyar, who, though an Islamic extremist, was also one of the Taliban's most militant opponents. But after September 1996, when first Jalalabad and then Qaboo fell to the Taliban, Bin Laden cemented his ties with them. That process did not always go smoothly. Bin Laden, no longer constrained by the Sudanese, clearly thought that he had new freedom to publish his appeals for Jihad. At about the time when the Taliban were making their final drive toward Jalalabad and Qaboo, Bin Laden issued his August 1996 fatwa, saying that, quote, we have been prevented from addressing the Muslims, end quote. But expressing relief that, quote, by the grace of Allah, a safe base here is now available in the high Hindu Kush mountains in Kurasan, end quote. But the Taliban, like the Sudanese, would eventually hear warnings, including from the Saudi monarchy. Though Bin Laden had promised Taliban leaders that he would be circumspect, he broke this promise almost immediately, giving an inflammatory interview to CNN in March 1997. The Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, promptly, quote, invited, end quote, Bin Laden to move to Kandahar ostensibly in the interests of Bin Laden's own security, but more likely to situate him where he might be easier to control. There is also evidence that around this time, Bin Laden sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response. According to one report, Saddam Hussein's effort at this time to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other Middle Eastern regimes led him to stay clear of Bin Laden. In mid-1998, the situation reversed. It was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative. In March 1998, after Bin Laden's public fatwa against the United States, two al-Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Laden. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Laden's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis. In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December. Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Laden or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Laden a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Laden declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date, we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States. Bin Laden eventually enjoyed a strong financial position in Afghanistan thanks to Saudi and other financiers associated with the Golden Chain. Through his relationship with Mullah Omar and the monetary and other benefits that it brought the Taliban, Bin Laden was able to circumvent restrictions. Mullah Omar would stand by him even when other Taliban leaders raised objections. Bin Laden appeared to have in Afghanistan a freedom of movement that he had lacked in Sudan. Al-Qaeda members could travel freely within the country, enter and exit it without visas or any immigration procedures, purchase and import vehicles and weapons, and enjoy the use of official Afghan Ministry of Defense license plates. Al-Qaeda also used the Afghan state-owned Arianna Airlines to courier money into the country. The Taliban seemed to open the doors to all who wanted to come to Afghanistan to train in the camps. The alliance with the Taliban provided Al-Qaeda a sanctuary in which to train and indoctrinate fighters and terrorists, import weapons, forge ties with other jihad groups and leaders and plot and staff terrorist schemes. While Bin Laden maintained his own Al-Qaeda guesthouses and camps for vetting and training recruits, he also provided support to and benefited from the broad infrastructure of such facilities in Afghanistan made available to the global network of Islamist movements. US intelligence estimates put the total number of fighters who underwent instruction in Bin Laden-supported camps in Afghanistan from 1996 through 9-11 at 10,000 to 20,000. In addition to training fighters and special operators, this larger network of guesthouses and camps provided a mechanism by which Al-Qaeda could screen and vet candidates for induction into its own organization. Thousands flowed through the camps, but no more than a few hundred seemed to have become Al-Qaeda members. From the time of its founding, Al-Qaeda had employed training and indoctrination to identify, quote, worthy, unquote, candidates. Al-Qaeda continued meanwhile to collaborate closely with the many Middle Eastern groups in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Somalia, and elsewhere, with which it had been linked when Bin Laden was in Sudan. It also reinforced its London base and its other offices around Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus. Bin Laden bolstered his links to extremists in South and Southeast Asia, including the Malaysian-Indonesian Jih and several Pakistani groups engaged in the Kashmir conflict. The February 1998 Fatwa thus seems to have been a kind of public launch of a renewed and stronger Al-Qaeda after a year and a half of work. Having rebuilt his fundraising network, Bin Laden had again become the rich man of the Jihad movement. He had maintained or restored many of his links with terrorists elsewhere in the world. And he had strengthened the internal ties in his own organization. The inner core of Al-Qaeda continued to be a hierarchical top-down group with defined positions, tasks, and salaries. Most but not all in this core swore fealty, or bayat, to Bin Laden. Other operatives were committed to Bin Laden or to his goals and would take assignments for him, but they did not swear bayat and maintained or tried to maintain some autonomy. A looser circle of adherents might give money to Al-Qaeda or train in its camps but remained essentially independent. Nevertheless, they constituted a potential resource for Al-Qaeda. Now effectively merged with Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Al-Qaeda promised to become the general headquarters for international terrorism without the need for the Islamic army Shura. Bin Laden was prepared to pick up where he had left off in Sudan. He was ready to strike at, quote, the head of the snake, unquote. Al-Qaeda's role in organizing terrorist operations had also changed. Before the move to Afghanistan, it had concentrated on providing funds, training, and weapons for actions carried out by members of allied groups. The attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa in the summer of 1998 would take a different form, planned, directed, and executed by Al-Qaeda under the direct supervision of Bin Laden and his chief aides. The Embassy bombings. As early as December 1993, a team of Al-Qaeda operatives had begun casing targets in Nairobi for future attacks. It was led by Ali Mohamed, a former Egyptian army officer who had moved to the United States in the mid-1980s, enlisted in the U.S. army and become an instructor at Fort Bragg. He had provided guidance and training to extremists at the Faroq Mosque in Brooklyn, including some who were subsequently convicted in the February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. The casing team also included a computer expert whose write-ups were reviewed by Al-Qaeda leaders. The team set up a makeshift laboratory for developing their surveillance photographs in an apartment in Nairobi where the various Al-Qaeda operatives and leaders based in or traveling to the Kenya cell sometimes met. Ban Shiri, Al-Qaeda's military committee chief, continued to be the operational commander of the cell, but because he was constantly on the move, Bin Laden had dispatched another operative, Khaled Al-Fawaz, to serve as the onsite manager. The technical surveillance and communications equipment employed for these casing missions included state-of-the-art video cameras obtained from China and from dealers in Germany. The casing team also reconnoitred targets in Djibouti. As early as January 1994, Bin Laden received the surveillance reports complete with diagrams prepared by the team's computer specialist. He, his top military committee members, Ban Shiri and his deputy Abu Hafs al-Masri, also known as Mohamed Atef, and a number of other Al-Qaeda leaders reviewed the reports. Agreeing that the U.S. embassy in Nairobi was an easy target because a car bomb could be parked close by, they began to form a plan. Al-Qaeda had begun developing the tactical expertise for such attacks months earlier when some of its operatives, top military committee members and several operatives who were involved with the Kenya cell among them were sent to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon. The cell in Kenya experienced a series of disruptions that may in part account for the relatively long delay before the attack was actually carried out. The difficulties Bin Laden began to encounter in Sudan in 1995, his move to Afghanistan in 1996, and the months spent establishing ties with the Taliban may also have played a role, as did Ben Shiri's accidental drowning. In August 1997, the Kenya cell panicked. The London Daily Telegraph reported that Madani Al-Tayyib, formerly head of Al-Qaeda's finance committee, had turned himself over to the Saudi government. The article said, incorrectly, that the Saudis were sharing Tayyib's information with the U.S. and British authorities. At almost the same time, cell members learned that U.S. and Kenyan agents had searched the Kenya residence of Wadi Al-Hayj who had become the new on-site manager in Nairobi and that Hayj's telephone was being tapped. Hayj was a U.S. citizen who had worked with Bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and in 1992 he went to Sudan to become one of Al-Qaeda's major financial operatives. When Hayj returned to the United States to appear before a grand jury investigating Bin Laden, the job of cell manager was taken over by Haroun Fazool, a Kenyan citizen who had been in Bin Laden's advanced team to Sudan back in 1990. Haroun faxed a report on the, quote, security situation, unquote, to several sites, warning that, quote, the crew members in East Africa is, seek, in grave danger, end quote, in part because, quote, America knows that the followers of Bin Laden carried out the operations to hit Americans in Somalia, end quote. The report provided instructions for avoiding further exposure. On February 23rd, 1998, Bin Laden issued his public fatwa. The language had been in negotiation for some time as part of the merger underway between Bin Laden's organization and Zahir's Egyptian-Islamic jihad. Less than a month after the publication of the fatwa, the teams that were to carry out the embassy attacks were being pulled together in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The timing and content of their instructions indicate that the decision to launch the attacks had been made by the time the fatwa was issued. The next four months were spent setting up the teams in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Members of the cells rented residences and purchased bomb-making materials and transport vehicles. At least one additional explosives expert was brought in to assist in putting the weapons together. In Nairobi, a hotel room was rented to put up some of the operatives. The suicide trucks were purchased shortly before the attack date. While this was taking place, Bin Laden continued to push his public message. On May 7th, the deputy head of al-Qaeda's military committee, Mohammed Atef, faxed to Bin Laden's London office a new fatwa issued by a group of sheikhs located in Afghanistan. A week later, it appeared in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, the same Arabic-language newspaper in London that had first published Bin Laden's February fatwa, and it carried the same message, the duty of Muslims to carry out holy war against the enemies of Islam and to expel the Americans from the Gulf region. Two weeks after that, Bin Laden gave a videotaped interview to ABC News with the same slogans, adding that, quote, we do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They are all targets in this fatwa, end quote. By August 1st, members of the cells not directly involved in the attacks had mostly departed from East Africa. The remaining operatives prepared and assembled the bombs and acquired the delivery vehicles. On August 4th, they made one last casing run at the embassy in Nairobi. By the evening of August 6th, all but the delivery teams and one or two persons assigned to remove the evidence trail had left East Africa. Back in Afghanistan, Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership had left Kandahar for the countryside, expecting U.S. retaliation. Declarations taking credit for the attacks had already been faxed to the joint al-Qaeda Egyptian Islamic Jihad office in Baku, with instructions to stand by for orders to, quote, instantly, end quote, transmit them to al-Quds al-Arabi. One proclaimed, quote, the formation of the Islamic army for the liberation of the holy places, end quote. And two others, one for each embassy, announced that the attack had been carried out by a, quote, company, end quote, of a, quote, battalion, end quote, of this, quote, Islamic army, end quote. On the morning of August 7th, the bomb-laden trucks drove into the embassies roughly five minutes apart, about 10.35 a.m. in Nairobi and 10.39 a.m. in Dar es Salaam. Shortly afterward, a phone call was placed from Baku to London. The previously prepared messages were then faxed to London. The attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi destroyed the embassy and killed 12 Americans and 201 others, almost all Kenyans. About 5,000 people were injured. The attack on the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam killed 11 more people, none of them Americans. Interviewed later about the deaths of the Africans, bin Laden answered that, quote, when it becomes apparent that it would be impossible to repel these Americans without assaulting them, even if this involved the killing of Muslims, this is permissible under Islam, end, quote. Asked if he had indeed masterminded these bombings, bin Laden said that the World Islamic Front for Jihad against, quote, Jews and Crusaders, end, quote, had issued a, quote, crystal clear, end, quote, Fatwa. If the instigation for Jihad against the Jews and the Americans to liberate the holy places, quote, is considered a crime, end, quote, he said, quote, let history be a witness that I am a criminal, end, quote. End of chapter 2.5. Recording by Corey Snow, Olympia, Washington, H-T-T-P, colon, slash, slash, w-w-w, dot, cyclometh, dot, com. There's three and 3.1 of the 9-11 commission report. This is the LibriFox recording. All LibriFox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriFox.org. Recording by Biddy. The 9-11 commission report, chapter 3. Counter-terrorism Evolves. In chapter 2, we describe the growth of a new kind of terrorism and a new terrorist organization. Especially from 1988 to 1998, Manusama bin Laden declared war and organized the bombing of two U.S. embassies. In this chapter, we trace the parallel evolution of government efforts to counter-terrorism by Islamic extremists against the United States. We mention many personalities in this report. As in any study of the U.S. government, some of the most important characters are institutions. We will introduce various agencies and how they adapted to new kind of terrorism. Chapter 3.1 From the Old Terrorism to the New. The First World Trade Center Bombing. At 18 minutes afternoon on February 26, 1993, a huge bomb went off beneath the two towers of the World Trade Center. This was not a suicide attack. The terrorist parked a truck bomb with a timing device on level B2 of the underground garage, then departed. The ensuing explosion opened a whole seven stories up. Six people died, more than 1,000 were injured. An FBI agent at the scene described the relatively low number of fatalities as a miracle. President Bill Clinton ordered his National Security Council to coordinate the response. Government agencies swung into action to find the culprits. The counter-terrorist center located at the CIA combed its files and queried sources around the world. The National Security Agency, NSA, the huge Defense Department Signals Collection Agency ramped up its communications intercept network and searched its database for clues. The New York field office of the FBI took control of local investigation and in the end set a pattern for future management of terrorist incidents. Four features of this episode have significance for the story of 9-11. First, the bombing signaled a new terrorist challenge, one whose rage and malice had no limit. Ramsey Yusef, the SUNY extremist who planted the bomb, said later that he had hoped to kill 250,000 people. Second, the FBI and the Justice Department did excellent work investigating the bombing. Within days, the FBI identified a truck remnant as a part of a rider rental van reported stolen in Jersey City the day before the bombing. Mohammed Salameh, who had rented the truck and reported it stolen, kept calling the rental office to get back his $400 deposit. The FBI arrested him there on March 4, 1993. In short order, the bureau had several plotters in custody, including Nidal Ayad, an engineer who had acquired chemicals for the bomb, and Mamut Abu Halima, who had helped mix the chemicals. The FBI identified another conspirator, Ahmad Ajay, who had been arrested by immigration authorities at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 1992, and charged with document fraud. His traveling companion was Ramsey Yusef, who had also entered with fraudulent documents but claimed political asylum and was admitted. It quickly became clear that Yusef had been a central player in the attack. He had fled to Pakistan immediately after the bombing and would remain at large for nearly two years. The arrests of Salameh, Abu Halima, and Ayad led the FBI to the Farouk Mosque in Brooklyn, where a central figure was Shaikh Omar Abdel Rahman, an extremist Sunni Muslim cleric who had moved to the United States from Egypt in 1990. In speeches and writings, the sightless Rahman, often called the blind Shaikh, preached the message of Sayyid Kourub's milestones, characterizing the United States as the oppressor of Muslims worldwide and asserting that it was their religious duty to fight against God's enemies. An FBI informant learned of the plan to bomb major New York landmarks, including the Holland and Lincoln tunnels. Disrupting this landmarks plot, the FBI in June 1993 arrested Rahman and various Confederates. As a result of the investigations and arrests, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York prosecuted and convicted multiple individuals, including Ajay, Salameh, Ayad, Abu Halima, the blind Shaikh, and Ramsey Yusef for crimes related to the World Trade Center bombing and other plots. An unfortunate consequence of this superb investigative and prosecutorial effort was that it created an impression that the law enforcement system was well equipped to cope with terrorism. Neither President Clinton, his principal advisors, the Congress nor the news media felt prompted until later to press the question of whether the procedures that put the blind Shaikh and Ramsey Yusef behind bars would really protect Americans against the new virus of which these individuals were just the first symptoms. Third, the successful use of the legal system to address the first World Trade Center bombing had the side effect of obscuring the need to examine the character and extent of the new threat facing the United States. The trials did not bring the bin Laden network to the attention of the public and policymakers. The FBI assembled and the U.S. Attorney's Office put forward some evidence showing that the men in the dock were not only plotters. Materials taken from Ajay indicated that the plot or plots were hatched at or near the Kaldan camp, a terrorist training camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Ajay had left Texas in April 1992 to go there to learn how to construct bombs. He had met Ramsey Yusef in Pakistan where they discussed bombing targets in the United States and assembled a terrorist kit that included bomb-making manuals, operations guidance, videotapes advocating terrorist action against the United States and false identification documents. Yusef was captured in Pakistan following the discovery by the police in the Philippines in January 1995 of the Manila Airplot which envisioned placing bombs on board a dozen Trans-Pacific airliners and setting them off simultaneously. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Yusef's uncle, then located in Qatar, was a fellow plotter of Yusef's in the Manila Airplot and had also wired him some money prior to the trade center bombing. The U.S. Attorney obtained an indictment against KSM in January 1996, but an official in the government of Qatar probably warned him about it. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed evaded capture and stayed at large to play a central part in the 9-11 attacks. The law enforcement process is concerned with proving the guilt of persons apprehended and charged. Investigators and prosecutors could not present all the evidence of possible involvement of individuals other than those charged, although they continued to pursue such investigations, planning or hoping for later prosecutions. The process was meant by its nature to mark for the public the events as finished, case solved, just as done. It was not designed to ask if the events might be harbingers of words to come, nor did it allow for aggregating and analyzing facts to see if they could provide clues to terrorist tactics more generally, methods of entry and finance, and mode of operation inside the United States. Fourth, although the bombing heightened awareness of a new terrorist danger, successful prosecutions contributed to widespread underestimation of the threat. The government's attorneys stressed the seriousness of the crimes and put forward evidence of Yusef's technical ingenuity. Yet the public image that persisted was not of clever Yusef, but of stupid Salome going back again and again to reclaim his $400 truck rental deposit. End of Chapter 3.1, recording by Biddy. Chapter 3.2 of the 9-11 commission report. This is the LibriFox recording. All LibriFox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, visit LibriFox.org. Recording by Biddy. The 9-11 commission report, Chapter 3.2. Adaptation and non-adaptation in the law enforcement community. Legal processes were the primary method for responding to these early manifestations of a new type of terrorism. Our overview of US capabilities for dealing with it thus begins with the nation's vast complex of law enforcement agencies. The Justice Department and the FBI. At the federal level, much law enforcement activity is concentrated in the Department of Justice. For countering terrorism, the dominant agency under justice is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI does not have a general grant of authority, but instead works under specific statutory authorizations. Most of its work is done in local offices, called field offices. There are 56 of them, each covering a specified geographic area and each quite separate from all others. Prior to 9-11, the special agent in charge was in general free to set his or her office's priorities and assign personnel accordingly. The office's priorities were driven by two primary concerns. First, performance in the bureau was generally measured against statistics, such as numbers of arrests, indictments, prosecutions and convictions. Counterterrorism and counterintelligence work often involving lengthy intelligence investigations that might never have positive or quantifiable results was not career enhancing. Most agents who reached management ranks had little counterterrorism experience. Second, priorities were driven at the local level by the field offices, whose concerns centered on traditional crimes, such as white collar offenses and those pertaining to drugs and gangs. Individual field offices made choices to serve local priorities, not national priorities. The bureau also operates under an Office of Origin system. To avoid duplication and possible conflicts, the FBI designates a single office to be in charge of an entire investigation. Because the New York field office indicted bin Laden prior to the East Africa bombings, it became the Office of Origin for all bin Laden cases, including the East Africa bombings and later the attack on the USS Cole. Most of the FBI's institutional knowledge on bin Laden and Al Qaeda resided there. This office worked closely with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to identify, arrest, prosecute and convict many of the perpetrators of the attacks and plots. Field offices other than the specified Office of Origin were often reluctant to spend much energy on matters over which they had no control and for which they received no credit. The FBI's domestic intelligence gathering dates from the 1930s. With World War II looming, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate foreign and foreign-inspired subversion, communist, Nazi and Japanese. Hoover added investigation of possible espionage, sabotage or subversion to the duties of field offices. After the war, foreign intelligence duties were assigned to the newly established Central Intelligence Agency. Hoover jealously guarded the FBI's domestic portfolio against all rivals. Hoover felt he was accountable only to the President and the FBI's domestic intelligence activities kept growing. In the 1960s, the FBI was receiving significant assistance within the United States from the CIA and from Army Intelligence. The legal basis for some of this assistance was dubious. Decades of encouragement to perform as a domestic intelligence agency abruptly ended in the 1970s. Two years after Hoover's death in 1972, congressional and news media investigations of the Watergate scandals of the Nixon administration expanded into general investigations of foreign and domestic intelligence by the church and pike committees. They disclosed domestic intelligence efforts which included a covert action program that operated from 1956 to 1971 against domestic organizations and eventually domestic dissidents. The FBI had spied on a wide range of political figures, especially individuals whom Hoover wanted to discredit, notably the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and had authorized unlawful wiretaps and surveillance. The shock registered in public opinion polls where the percentage of Americans declaring a highly favorable view of the FBI dropped from 84% to 37%. The FBI's domestic intelligence division was dissolved. In 1976, Attorney General Edward Levi adopted domestic security guidelines to regulate intelligence collection in the United States and to deflect calls for even stronger regulation. In 1983, Attorney General William French Smith revised the Levi guidelines to encourage closer investigation of potential terrorism. He also loosened the rules governing authorization for investigations and their duration. Still, his guidelines, like Levi's, took account of the reality that suspicion of terrorism, like suspicion of subversion, could lead to making individuals' targets for investigation more because of their beliefs than because of their acts. Smith's guidelines also took account of the reality that potential terrorists were often members of extremist religious organizations and that investigation of terrorism could cross the line separating state and church. In 1986, Congress authorized the FBI to investigate terrorist attacks against Americans that occur outside the United States. Three years later, it added authority for the FBI to make arrests abroad without consent from the host country. Meanwhile, a task force headed by Vice President George H.W. Bush had endorsed a concept already urged by director of central intelligence, William Casey, a counter-terrorist center where the FBI, the CIA, and other organizations could work together on international terrorism. While it was distinctly a CIA entity, the FBI detailed officials to work at the center and obtained leads that helped in the capture of persons wanted for trial in the United States. The strengths that the FBI brought to counter-terrorism were nowhere more brilliantly on display than in the case of Pan-American Flight 103, bound from London to New York, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 270 people. Initial evidence pointed to the government of Syria and later Iran. The counter-terrorist center reserved judgment on the perpetrators of the attack. Meanwhile, FBI technicians working with UK security services gathered and analyzed the widely scattered fragments of the airliner. In 1991, with the help of the counter-terrorist center, they identified one small fragment as part of a timing device, to the technicians as distinctive as DNA. It was a Libyan device. Together with other evidence, the FBI put together a case pointing conclusively to the Libyan government. Eventually, Libya acknowledged its responsibility. Pan-M-103 became a cautionary tale against rushing to judgment in attributing responsibility for a terrorist act. It also showed again how, given a case to solve, the FBI remained capable of extraordinary investigative success. FBI organization and priorities. In 1993, President Clinton chose Louis Free as the director of the bureau. Free, who would remain director until June 2001, believed that the FBI's work should be done primarily by the field offices. To emphasize this view, he cut headquarters staff and decentralized operations. The special agents in charge gained power, influence, and independence. Free recognized terrorism as a major threat. He increased the number of legal attaché offices abroad, focusing in particular on the Middle East. He also urged agents not to wait for terrorist acts to occur before taking action. In his first budget request to Congress after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he stated that merely solving this type of crime is not enough. It is equally important that the FBI thwart terrorism before such acts can be perpetrated. Within headquarters, he created a counter-terrorism division that would complement the counter-terrorist center at the CIA and arranged for exchanges of senior FBI and CIA counter-terrorism officials. He pressed for more cooperation between legal attachés and CIA stations abroad. Free's efforts did not, however, translate into a significant shift of resources to counter-terrorism. FBI, justice, and office of management and budget officials said that FBI leadership seemed unwilling to shift resources to terrorism from other areas, such as violent crime and drug enforcement. Other FBI officials blamed Congress and the OMB for a lack of political will and failure to understand the FBI's counter-terrorism resource needs. In addition, Free did not impose his views on the field offices. With a few notable exceptions, the field offices did not apply significant resources to terrorism and often reprogrammed funds for other priorities. In 1998, the FBI issued a five-year strategic plan led by its deputy director, Robert Bear Bryant. For the first time, the FBI designated national and economic security, including counter-terrorism, as its top priority. Dale Watson, who would later become the head of the new counter-terrorism division, said that after the East Africa bombings, the light came on that cultural change had to occur within the FBI. The plan mandated a stronger intelligence collection effort. It called for a nationwide automated system to facilitate information collection, analysis, and dissemination. It envisioned the creation of a professional intelligence cadre of experienced and trained agents and analysts. If successfully implemented, this would have been a major step toward addressing terrorism systematically, rather than as individual unrelated cases, but the plan did not succeed. First, the plan did not obtain the necessary human resources. Despite designating national and economic security as its top priority in 1998, the FBI did not shift human resources accordingly. Although the FBI's counter-terrorism budget tripled during the mid-1990s, FBI counter-terrorism spending remained fairly constant between fiscal years 1998 and 2001. In 2000, there were still twice as many agents devoted to drug enforcement as to counter-terrorism. Second, the new division intended to strengthen the FBI's strategic analysis capability faltered. It received insufficient resources and faced resistance from senior managers in the FBI's operational divisions. The new division was supposed to identify trends in terrorist activity, determine what the FBI did not know, and ultimately drive collection efforts. However, the FBI had little appreciation for the role of analysis. Analysts continued to be used primarily in a tactical fashion, providing support for existing cases. Compounding the problem was the FBI's tradition of hiring analysts from within, instead of recruiting individuals with the relevant educational background and expertise. Moreover, analysts had difficulty getting access to the FBI and intelligence community information they were expected to analyze. The poor state of the FBI's information systems meant that such access depended in large part on an analyst's personal relationships with individuals in the operational units or squads where the information resided. For all of these reasons, prior to 9-11, relatively few strategic analytic reports about counter-terrorism had been completed. Indeed, the FBI had never completed an assessment of the overall terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland. Third, the FBI did not have an effective intelligence collection effort. Collection of intelligence from human sources was limited and agents were inadequately trained. Only three days of a 16-week agents course were devoted to counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism, and most subsequent training was received on the job. The FBI did not have an adequate mechanism for validating source reporting, nor did it have a system for adequately tracking and sharing source reporting, either internally or externally. The FBI did not dedicate sufficient resources to the surveillance and translation needs of counter-terrorism agents. It lacked sufficient translators, proficient in Arabic and other key languages, resulting in a significant backlog of untranslated intercepts. Finally, the FBI's information systems were woefully inadequate. The FBI lacked the ability to know what it knew. There was no effective mechanism for capturing or sharing its institutional knowledge. FBI agents did create records of interviews and other investigative efforts, but there were no reports officers to condense the information into meaningful intelligence that could be retrieved and disseminated. In 1999, the FBI created separate counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence divisions. Dale Watson, the first head of the new counter-terrorism division, recognized the urgent need to increase the FBI's counter-terrorism capability. His plan, called Max Cap 05, was unveiled in 2000. It set the goal of bringing the bureau to its maximum feasible capacity in counter-terrorism by 2005. Field executives told Watson that they did not have the analysts, linguists, or technically trained experts to carry out the strategy. In a report provided to director Robert Mueller in September 2001, one year after Watson presented his plan to field executives, almost every FBI field office was assessed to be operating below maximum capacity. The report stated that the goal to prevent terrorism requires a dramatic shift in emphasis from a reactive capability to highly functioning intelligence capability which provides not only leads and operational support but clear strategic analysis and direction. Legal constraints on the FBI and the wall. The FBI had different tools for law enforcement and intelligence. For criminal matters, it could apply for and use traditional criminal warrants. For intelligence matters involving international terrorism, however, the rules were different. For many years, the attorney general could authorize surveillance of foreign powers and agents of foreign powers without any court review. But in 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law regulated intelligence collection directed at foreign powers and agents of foreign powers in the United States. In addition to requiring court review of proposed surveillance and later physical searches, the 1978 act was interpreted by the courts to require that a search be approved only if its primary purpose was to obtain foreign intelligence information. In other words, the authorities of the FISA law could not be used to circumvent traditional criminal warrant requirements. The Justice Department interpreted these rulings as saying that criminal prosecutors could be briefed on FISA information but could not direct or control its collection. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Justice prosecutors had informal arrangements for obtaining information gathered in the FISA process. The understanding being that they would not improperly exploit that process for their criminal cases. Whether the FBI shared with prosecutors information pertinent to possible criminal investigations was left solely to the judgment of the FBI. But the prosecution of Aldrich Ames for SP and IS in 1994 revived concerns about the prosecutor's role in intelligence investigations. The Department of Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, OIPR, is responsible for reviewing and presenting all FISA applications to the FISA court. It worried that because of the numerous prior consultations between FBI agents and prosecutors, the judge might rule that the FISA warrants had been misused. If that had happened, Ames might have escaped conviction. Richard Scruggs, the acting head of OIPR, complained to Attorney General Janet Reno about the lack of information sharing controls. On his own, he began imposing information sharing procedures for FISA material. The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review became the gatekeeper for the flow of FISA information to criminal prosecutors. In July 1995, Attorney General Reno issued formal procedures aimed at managing information sharing between Justice Department prosecutors and the FBI. They were developed in a working group led by the Justice Department's Executive Office of National Security, overseen by Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorlik. These procedures, while requiring the sharing of intelligence information with prosecutors, regulated the manner in which such information could be shared from the intelligence side of the house to the criminal side. These procedures were almost immediately misunderstood and misapplied. As a result, there was far less information sharing and coordination between the FBI and the criminal division in practice than was allowed under the department's procedures. Over time, the procedures came to be referred to as the wall. The term the wall is misleading, however, because several factors led to a series of barriers to information sharing that developed. The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review became the sole gatekeeper for passing information to the criminal division. Though Attorney General Reno's procedures did not include such a provision, the office assumed the role anyway, arguing that its position reflected the concerns of Judge Royce Lambert, then Chief Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The office threatened that if it could not regulate the flow of information to criminal prosecutors, it would no longer present the FBI's warrant request to the FISA court. The information flow withered. The 1995 procedures dealt only with sharing between agents and criminal prosecutors, not between two kinds of FBI agents, those working on intelligence matters and those working on criminal matters. But pressure from the Office of Intelligence Policy Review, the FBI leadership and the FISA court built barriers between agents, even agents serving on the same squads. FBI Deputy Director Bryant reinforced the office's caution by informing agents that too much information sharing could be a career stopper. Agents in the field began to believe incorrectly that no FISA information could be shared with agents working on criminal investigations. This perception evolved into this still more exaggerated belief that the FBI could not share any intelligence information with criminal investigators, even if no FISA procedures had been used. Thus, relevant information from the National Security Agency and the CIA often failed to make its way to criminal investigators. Separate reviews in 1999, 2000 and 2001 concluded independently that information sharing was not occurring and that the intent of the 1995 procedures was ignored routinely. We will describe some of the unfortunate consequences of these accumulated institutional beliefs and practices in Chapter 8. There were other legal limitations. Both prosecutors and FBI agents argued that they were barred by court rules from sharing grand jury information, even though the prohibition applied only to that small fraction that had been presented to a grand jury and even that prohibition had exceptions. But as interpreted by FBI field offices, this prohibition could conceivably apply to much of the information unearthed in an investigation. There were also restrictions arising from executive order on the commingling of domestic information with foreign intelligence. Finally, the NSA began putting caveats on its bin Laden related reports that require prior approval before sharing their contents with criminal investigators and prosecutors. These developments further blocked the arteries of information sharing. Other law enforcement agencies. The Justice Department is much more than the FBI. It also has a US Marshall service, almost 4,000 strong on 9-11 and especially expert in tracking fugitives with much local police knowledge. The Department's Drug Enforcement Administration had, as of 2001, more than 4,500 agents. There were a number of occasions when DEA agents were able to introduce sources to the FBI or CIA for counter-terrorism use. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS, with its 9,000 Border Patrol agents, 4,500 inspectors and 2,000 immigration special agents had perhaps the greatest potential to develop an expanded role in counter-terrorism. However, the INS was focused on the formidable challenges posed by illegal entry over the Southwest border, criminal aliens, and a growing backlog in the applications for naturalizing immigrants. The White House, the Justice Department, and above all, the Congress, reinforced these concerns. In addition, when Doris Meissner became INS Commissioner in 1993, she found an agency seriously hampered by outdated technology and insufficient human resources. Border Patrol agents were still using manual typewriters. Inspectors at ports of entry were using a paper watch list. The asylum and other benefits system did not effectively deter fraudulent applicants. Commissioner Meissner responded in 1993 to the World Trade Center bombing by providing seed money to the State Department's Consular Affairs Bureau to automate its terrorist watch list used by consular officers and border inspectors. The INS assigned an individual in a new lookout unit to work with the State Department in watch listing suspected terrorists and with the intelligence community and the FBI in determining how to deal with them when they appeared at ports of entry. By 1998, 97 suspected terrorists had been denied admission at US ports of entry because of the watch list. How to conduct deportation cases against aliens who were suspected terrorists caused significant debate. The INS had immigration law expertise and authority to bring the cases, but the FBI possessed the classified information sometimes needed as evidence and information sharing conflicts resulted. New laws in 1996 authorized the use of classified evidence in removal hearings, but the INS removed only a handful of the aliens with links to terrorist activity non-identified as associated with al-Qaeda using classified evidence. Mid-level INS employees proposed comprehensive counterterrorism proposals to management in 1986, 1995 and 1997. No action was taken on them. In 1997, a national security unit was set up to handle alerts, track potential terrorist cases for possible immigration enforcement action and work with the rest of the Justice Department. It focused on the FBI's priorities of Hezbollah and Hamas and began to examine how immigration laws could be brought to bear on terrorism. For instance, it sought unsuccessfully to require that CIA security checks be completed before naturalization applications were approved. Policy questions such as whether resident alien status should be revoked upon the person's conviction of a terrorist crime were not addressed. Congress, with the support of the Clinton administration, doubled the number of Border Patrol agents required along the border with Mexico to one agent every quarter mile by 1999. It rejected efforts to bring additional resources to bear in the north. The border with Canada had one agent for every 13.25 miles. Despite examples of terrorists entering from Canada, awareness of terrorist activity in Canada and its more lenient immigration laws and an Inspector General's report recommending that the Border Patrol develop a northern border strategy, the only positive step was that the number of Border Patrol agents was not cut any further. Inspectors at the ports of entry were not asked to focus on terrorists. Inspectors told us they were not even aware when they checked the names of the incoming passengers against the automated watch list, they were checking in part for terrorists. In general, border inspectors also did not have the information they needed to make fact-based determinations of admissibility. The INS initiated but failed to bring to completion two efforts that would have provided inspectors with information relevant to counter-terrorism, a proposed system to track foreign student visa compliance and a program to establish a way of tracking traveler's entry to and exit from the United States. In 1996, a new law enabled the INS to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies through which the INS provided training and the local agencies exercised immigration enforcement authority. Terrorist watch lists were not available to them. Marys and cities with large immigrant populations sometimes imposed limits on city employee cooperation with federal immigration agents. A large population lives outside the legal framework. Fraudulent documents could be easily obtained. Congress kept the number of INS agents static in the face of the overwhelming problem. The chief vehicle for INS and for state and local participation in law enforcement was the Joint Terrorism Task Force, JTTF. First tried out in New York City in 1980 in response to a spate of incidents involving domestic terrorist organizations. This task force was managed by the New York Field Office of the FBI and its existence provided an opportunity to exchange information and as happened after the first World Trade Center bombing to enlist local officers as well as other agency representatives as partners in the FBI investigation. The FBI expanded the number of JTTFs throughout the 1990s and by 9-11 there were 34. While useful, the JTTFs had limitations. They set low priorities in accordance with regional and field office concerns and most were not fully staffed. Many state and local entities believed they had little to gain from having a full-time representative on a JTTF. Other federal law enforcement resources also not seriously enlisted for counter-terrorism were to be found in the Treasury Department. Treasury housed the Secret Service, the Customs Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Given the Secret Service's mission to protect the President and other high officials, its agents did become involved with those of the FBI whenever terrorist assassination plots were rumored. The Customs Service deployed agents at all points of entry into the United States. Its agents worked alongside INS agents and the two groups sometimes cooperated. In the winter of 1999-2000, as will be detailed in Chapter 6, questioning by an especially alert Customs Inspector led to the arrest of an al-Qaeda terrorist whose apparent mission was to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was used on occasion by the FBI as a resource. The ATF's laboratories and analysis were critical to the investigation of the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Before 9-11, with the exception of one portion of the FBI, very little of the sprawling U.S. law enforcement community was engaged in countering terrorism. Moreover, law enforcement could be effective only after specific individuals were identified, a plot had formed or an attack had already occurred. Responsible individuals had to be located, apprehended and transported back to a U.S. court for prosecution. As FBI agents emphasized to us, the FBI and the Justice Department do not have cruise missiles. They declare war by indicting someone. They took on the lead role in addressing terrorism because they were asked to do so. End of Chapter 3.2, recording by Biddy.