On This Day in 9/11 History
A Timeline by William M. Arkin
9/11 as an event is obscure to many who didn’t live through it, little understood by those who did, controversial and impenetrable to those who think and write about it, and intentionally still hidden behind veils of secrecy, even two decades after it occurred.
To accompany the publication of History in One Act: A Novel of 9/11 (Featherproof Books), national security expert, bestselling author, and award-winning journalist William M. Arkin has compiled a year’s worth of daily insights and updates: contextual research, related historical events, and detailed background pulled from a vast trove of his career’s work. Every day, until the 20th anniversary of 9/11, there will be new information and insight posted right here.
History in One Act is a fresh retelling of the events leading up to 9/11, a novel which completely immerses readers into two worlds: one of al Qaeda, and one of American espionage. It’s a never-before-told tale of masterminds, spies, pilots, presidents, and princes—but most importantly, it tries to answer the still-unanswered question: who were the men behind 9/11?
2021
Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency begins its own program to recruit Arab fighters from the Middle East to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, some two years after the invasion. Pakistan and the United States had just concluded a $3.2 billion military assistance deal (including its current crop of F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters) and Pakistan began the largest covert operation...
With the publication of a CIA report, “Intelligence Community Terrorist Threat Advisory”, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks reaches its highest level since the Millennium alerts of 1999. Michael Morell, President Bush’s CIA briefer (and future acting director of the Agency) says that in the first three months of the Bush administration, there was “little to no specific threat reporting...
The CIA begins supplying select Afghan mujahidin guerrillas with shoulder-launched Stinger surface-to-air missiles to help them attack Soviet forces and shoot down helicopter gunships. The missiles become legendary and falsely credit the missiles (and the United States) with turning the tide of the Afghan-Soviet war even though by 1986 the Soviet Army is exhausted and Soviet soldier deaths in Afghanistan is beginning to have...
The CIA delivers two document drafts in response to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s request for a new series of authorities relating to covert action in Afghanistan and against Osama bin Laden. The new presidential finding drafts are labeled “consolidation plus” and are to supersede the various Clinton administration findings. One addressing more assistance to anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, including the so-called Northern Alliance,...
Osama bin Laden begins helping Abdullah Azzam, his mentor, to run the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), the “Office of Services,” which becomes a key node in the private funding network for the Afghanistan war and is the “precursor organization to al Qaeda.” (9/11 Commission Report, p. 89) While living full-time in Pakistan, bin Laden also supports the building of six Arab-only training camps in Afghanistan,...
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright delivers a speech at Georgetown University in which she argues that sanctions likely will not end until Saddam is replaced. This no normalization without regime change is the policy adopted by two administrations and the roots of the second Gulf War. A year earlier, the Center for Economic and Social Rights took Lesley Stahl and “60 Minutes” to Iraq...
Saudi King Faisal (Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud) is assassinated by a member of the royal family, his killing ascribed to his program of modernization. His half-brother’s son shoots him point blank driven, the story goes, by Faisal’s support for television broadcasts. When first introduced in 1965, Faisal assuages the religious community by broadcasting prayers. But ultraconservatives still undertake violent protests. The assassin’s brother...
Osama bin Laden leaves Afghanistan for Sudan, partly because of the intractability of the Afghan domestic situation and the endless fighting amongst rival groups and partially because he is concerned for his own safety, with reports of Saudi-sponsored assassination attempts on his life being carried out by Pakistan. Bin Laden and Prince Turki, head of Saudi intelligence, supposedly have a fundamental break, bin Laden...
Mahmoud Abouhalima (Abu Halima) (“The Red”) is forcibly rendered to the United States, the first known extraordinary rendition. Abouhalima had been implicated as an accomplice in the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in midtown Manhattan in November 1990 and was one of Ramzi Yousef’s assistants in the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Abouhalima fled to Egypt and was picked up by Egyptian...
From Hamburg, Germany, Mohammed Atta emails 31 different U.S. flight schools inquiring about taking flying lessons. He says he is writing on behalf of a small group of men from various Arab countries who, while lacking prior training, were interested in learning to fly in the United States to pursue careers as professional airline pilots. Atta requested information about the cost of the training,...
Omar Abdel-Rahman (the Egyptian “blind sheikh”) visits the anti-Soviet front in Afghanistan for the first time, meeting with Palestinian leader Abdullah Azzam and a young Osama bin Laden. Within a year, the two main Egyptian radical Islamic ideologues, the blind sheikh and Ayman al Zawahiri were exiled from their home countries, Zawahiri first escaping to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and then going to Peshawar. Abdel-Rahman...
A Japanese doomsday cult organization, Aum Shinrikyo, plants sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 and injuring some 5,700. A similar attack occurs nearly simultaneously in the Yokohama subway system. President Clinton would later paint a bleak future if nations did not cooperate against “organized forces of destruction,” telling the audience that only a small amount of “nuclear [yellow]cake put in...
Hail Caesar! Bill Clinton nominates George Tenet to be the director of the CIA, and all of Washington celebrates. Somehow miraculously, a man who was Deputy Director of the Agency since July 1995, and who had served before that as White House NSC senior director for intelligence programs, and before that was as Senate intelligence aide, is portrayed as a breath of fresh air...
The CIA produces a report on Osama bin Laden’s attempts to acquire uranium. It is based upon the interrogation of Jamal al-Fadl, a defector from bin Laden’s camp in Sudan. Al-Fadl claims to have personally been involved in missions to Angola and Tanzania to acquire the radioactive materials, and even to have worked on behalf of bin Laden to purchase Russian “loose nuke” materials...
Anthony Lake, Bill Clinton’s first National Security Advisor, withdraws his name from nomination to be CIA director, issuing a stinging statement about his withdrawal. He says that Washington had gone ‘haywire’ and decried the “gotcha” atmosphere that had taken over Washington, favoring partisan politics over policy. Lake’s nomination came under fire from Republicans in Congress, though the specific indictment against him is that he...
Iraq uses chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians in the village of Halabja, killing perhaps thousands. Saddam Hussein had begun the "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq a month before, eventually killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages. Since the end of the monarchy in 1959, the Kurds have opposed Baghdad rule of their northeastern homeland.
The CIA briefs National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that its “preliminary judgment” is that a “strong circumstantial case” can be made that al Qaeda was behind the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, but that it lacked “conclusive information on external command and control” of the attack. A week later, Roger Cressey on the NSC staff writes to Deputy National Security...
President Clinton receives an update memo on U.S. covert action efforts against Osama bin Ladin, including new contact in Afghanistan, new eavesdropping equipment inside the country, and an increase in human intelligence sources. He writes in the memo’s margin after reading the update that the United States “could surely do better.” (911 Commission, p. 187)
The first clandestine CIA team operates inside Afghanistan (March 13-21), making contact with Ahmed Massoud, the leader of the so-called “Northern Alliance” that is fighting the Taliban. George Tenet later writes: “Five times in the two years prior to 9/11, CIA teams deployed to the Panjshir Valley of Northern Afghanistan to meet with various tribal warlords, and particularly with Ahmed Shah Masood … We...
Ignoring an international outcry, the Taliban blow up two giant 1,500 year old statues of Buddha – carved into the cliffs above Bamiyan now we notice. Ignoring an international outcry, the Taliban blow up two 2,000-year-old Buddhist statues in the cliffs above Bamiyan, west of Kabul. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, declared that the statues were “idols” and order their destruction. Taliban...
On nine occasions between March 11-27, the FBI says (in the famed “28 pages” partially declassified in 2016) that a Saudi “naval officer” by the name of Lafi al-Harbi is in telephone contract with Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in San Diego. He is at least the second Saudi government official – the other being Omar Bayoumi – who has contact with the two...
Mohammed bin Laden and his wife, Alia Ghanem, a Syrian, give birth to Osama bin Laden in Riyadh. He is 17th of 52 children sired by bin Laden, who had 11 different wives. Bin Laden the senior is Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest construction magnate and is granted my contracts by the Royal family to build buildings, roads, and renovate Islamic holy shrines. Osama means “young...
A dozen Hanafi Muslims seize 134 hostages in three buildings in Washington DC, America’s first acquaintance with Islamic terror. The leader of the Hanafi Movement said that the purpose of the siege was to bring attention to the 1973 murders of his wife, two children, and nine-day-old grandchild, and the shooting of his daughter, at the hands of the Nation of Islam. Only blocks...
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice directs the CIA to prepare a new series of legal authorities for a program of consolidated and methodical covert action in Afghanistan. Rice later tells the 9/11 Commission that the subsequent draft CIA document prepared and presented on March 28 provided for “consolidation plus,” superseding the various Clinton administration documents. CIA director George Tenet later writes: “These authorities would...
Attorney General John Ashcroft meets with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to discuss the existing legal authorities for covert action against Osama bin Laden. He says that Justice Department lawyers determined that the authorities – both for actions in Afghanistan and to capture or kill bin Laden – were unclear and insufficient. He suggested new, explicit kill authorities be developed.
President George H.W. Bush mention the “New World Order” for the first time in a address to Congress. With the defeat of Iraq in Desert Storm, he outline a plan for maintaining a permanent U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf, for providing funds for Middle East development, and for instituting safeguards against the spread of WMD. He pledge an Arab-Israeli treaty based on...
After losing track of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after they left Malaysia in January (they flew to Los Angeles via Bangkok), the CIA gets a belated response from Thailand’s intelligence service with three names, Mihdhar, Hazmi, and one Salah Saeed Mohammed Bin Yousaf. The Thai service reports that Hazmi traveled onward to Los Angeles, arriving on January 15. It is the first positive...
Osama Bin Laden first visits Pakistan and Afghanistan, less than three months after the Soviet invasion. He is working for Saudi authorities, or at least cooperating with Saudi intelligence in providing information and support for Saudi and Gulf-state citizens motivated to go to Afghanistan to fight. Bin Laden also begins to provide financial, organizational, and engineering aid for the local mujahidin in Afghanistan. Some...
Sudanese minister of state for defense Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa secretly meets with U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney and CIA officers in Hyatt hotel room in Rosslyn, Virginia with the purpose of opening a back channel discussion on how to get Sudan off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The CIA produces a list, asking for the names of Osama bin Laden associates, their...
Paul Wolfowitz is sworn in as Deputy Secretary of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld, a big brain regarded for his strategic studies knowledge. He was another in the stable of national security experts to school and provide cover for the inexperienced George W. Bush. On Iraq in particular, Wolfowitz as Pentagon policy chief under Bush the elder (and a deputy to then Secretary of Defense...
After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the high point of Arab participation in the Afghanistan jihad actually occurs in the so-called battles of Jalalabad, as Osama bin Laden’s Arab brigade takes control of the airport and defends the eastern mountain sanctuaries from Afghan fighters. Up until the victory of the Taliban seven years later, al Qaeda holds on to territory in eastern and southern...
Following a short ground campaign against an Iraqi army already defeated by 39 days of bombing, a theatrical and photogenic ceasefire is declared after 100 hours. On the orders of President Bush, offensive operations against Iraq end at 0801 local Riyadh time (one minute after midnight in Washington, DC (EST) and at 0501 GMT). CENTCOM says in its SITREP: “Effective 280500Z Feb, all forces...
The strange case of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, unfolds when federal and local law enforcement in Los Angeles execute three search warrants and arrest seven individuals on charges of alleged material support of a terrorist organization. The individuals arrested are charged with have knowingly conspired to support the MEK by conducting fund raising, financial transactions, and other activities in...
The World Trade Center in lower Manhattan is badly damaged when a car bomb planted explodes in an underground garage of 2 World Trade Center, on the second subterranean level of Vista Hotel's public parking garage. The bomb leaves six people dead and more than 1,000 people are treated for injuries. Ramzi Yousef constructs and helps plant the bomb, and the six men subsequently...
The first of many reports on German “intelligence” linking al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein emerge, ultimately forming the basis for later speculation of an Iraqi link to the 9/11 attacks. After two unidentified Iraqi men are arrested in Germany on suspicion of spying, a French-based Arab newspaper reports: "The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of...
Colin Powell takes his first foreign trip as Secretary of State, to the Middle East. He stops in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan, Kuwait, and Syria. In Riyadh, he meets with King Fahd, Crown Prince Abdullah and other high-ranking officials. He then travels on to Damascus, where he meets with President Bashar Assad. Powell hears an earful throughout the...
Osama bin Laden issues his second fatwa, or religious ruling. He calls for jihad against U.S. military and civilian targets anywhere in the world. The fatwa represents a shift from criticizing the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia. Even with this fatwa, bin Laden's name and the al Qaeda cause had been obscure outside of Saudi Arabia and Sudan. But bin Laden’s call enervates a...
President George W. Bush holds his first full-fledged Presidential news conference. He does not mention, nor is he asked by the White House press, about terrorism. On Iraq, he says that Secretary of State Colin Powell was traveling to the Middle East to “listen to our allies as to how best to effect a policy, the primary goal of which will be to say...
A previously unarmed Predator drone (RQ-1) hits a stationary target for the first time with a Hellfire-C anti-tank missile, the first unmanned aerial vehicle to destroy an armored target on the ground. At Indian Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field in Nevada, the Air Force sets up the Predator on a hardstand, positioning it more than a kilometer from a stationary tank. The drone test...
The new long-range Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle rolls out of its production plant in California. A development version of Global Hawk (RQ-4A) took off from Edwards AFB, in California on April 22 and had flown a 23-hour, 8,600-mile mission, nonstop and unrefueled over the Pacific Ocean, to Royal Australian Air Force Base at Edinburgh, Australia the next day. Officials planned to acquire a...
Four persons associated with Osama bin Laden are arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, part of ongoing CIA operations – “disruptions” – where director George Tenet and White House counterterrorism specialist Richard Clarke believe al Qaeda’s ability to carry out attacks is being thwarted. On May 10, Tenet tells Senate Appropriations Committee that though terrorism is on the rise, especially against the United States, the strategic...
A “Town Hall” meeting is held at Ohio State University on Iraq, attended by an all-star cast from the Clinton administration: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. The intent is to rally support for action against Saddam Hussein, the three arguing that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had used them. The three...
German intelligence intercepts a telephone call in Hamburg, eavesdropping on Mohammed Haydar Zammar’s communications. Zammar is a Syrian born German citizen and is believed by German authorities to be a recruiter for al Qaeda and other Islamic radical groups. In this call, Zammar reportedly said he was going to a meeting on Marienstrasse with "Mohammed, Ramzi and Said." This refers to Mohammed Atta, Ramzi...
President Bush on his first foreign trip meets with President Fox in San Cristobal, Mexico, is completely surprised when the United States carries out airstrikes in Iraq. In the “first airstrikes” of the Bush administration, 24 U.S. and U.K. aircraft strike Iraqi targets near Baghdad in one of the largest “response options” since Desert Fox. The Bush White House is completely unaware of the...
Abdullah Ocalan, head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is arrested in Kenya and forcibly returned to Turkey. Ocalan had sought refuge in the Greek embassy in Nairobi and is kidnapped by Turkish intelligence, reportedly with the help of the CIA. On February 9, 2000, the PKK announced a formal halt to its war against Ankara and adopted a new name, Kongra-Gel, reelecting the...
Ayatollah Khomeini sentences author Salman Rushdie to death for publishing The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims consider insulting to the Prophet Muhammed. A few weeks later, Iran severs relations with the UK when the latter refuses to denounce Rushdie. On July 3, 1991, the Italian translator of Salman Rushdie's book, "The Satanic Verses," is stabbed and beaten by a man believed to be Iranian...
CIA director George Tenet briefs National Security Advisor Sandy Berger on what Tenet writes is the “first of what would become several plans to try to capture bin Laden.” The plan briefed is to work with a group of “tribals” in southern Afghanistan, Pashtun groups opposing both the Taliban and willing to work for the CIA. The tribals would attack Tarnak Farm outside Kandahar,...
Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna is killed near his office in Cairo by Egyptian government security service agents. The Brotherhood becomes the most important “radical” Islamic organization until it is eclipsed by groups created as a result of its suppression, and by Saudi support, either in response to continued colonial occupation of the Middle East, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iranian revolution,...
Osama bin Laden begins to invest in Sudan, buying numerous properties and businesses. The Saudi Binladin Group receives a contract to build an airport in Port Sudan. In October 1990, Osama bin Laden reportedly first visited Khartoum, a year after the coup d’etat by the National Islamic Front (NIF). Soon after Desert Storm, bin Laden leaves Saudi Arabia for Sudan, and according to George...
The CIA’s Senior Executive Intelligence Brief (SEIB) contains a Top Secret article: “Bin Ladin’s Interest in Biological, Radiological Weapons” summarizing intelligence since Osama bin Laden’s May 1998 “Nuclear Bomb of Islam” fatwa, where he stated that “it is the duty of the Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God.” The intelligence on Al Qaeda’s interest in WMD...
Ramzi Yousef is removed from Pakistan in an “extraordinary rendition.” After being forcibly capture in Islamabad on the night of February 7 by a combination of State Department Diplomatic Security agents and Pakistani officers, the FBI negotiates his removal over two intense days with the Pakistani government. The FBI quietly borrows a corporate jet from a still unknown CEO to return the leader of...
Intelligence briefers meet with Vice President Cheney and tell him that the CIA has concluded that al Qaeda was responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000. Just before the Clinton administration left office, the CIA Cole Task Force presented the team’s findings to the National Security Council, stating that their “preliminary judgment” was that al Qaeda “supported the attack” on...
Hani Hanjour, the hijacker pilot would fly American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon begins Boeing large airplane simulator training in Arizona. The Saudi is the most experienced of the three pilots, having received his commercial airline license in 1999. But he evidently could not get a job with any airline. After the 9/11 attacks, much was written, based on FBI leaks and inquiries...
CIA director George Tenet testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the "Worldwide Threat 2001: National Security in a Changing World," addressing terrorism. "The threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving,” he says. “State sponsored terrorism appears to have declined over the past five years, but transnational groups—with decentralized leadership that makes them harder to identify and...
The new President George W. Bush signs a letter to Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf seeking more help from Islamabad in the CIA’s efforts to go after the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. By Bush’s inaugural, the CIA has multiple covert actions underway to spy on, capture, or kill bin Laden. To be successful, the Agency thought, it needed more cooperation from...
There is an assassination attempt on Osama bin Laden, while he is living in Khartoum, Sudan. Bin Laden believes it is Egyptian intelligence; the CIA believes it is the Saudis. (Looming Tower, p. 192) Though U.S. intelligence is barely registering bin Laden’s importance, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia had taken notice of Bin Laden’s post Afghanistan life in Sudan, the scale of his enterprises,...
Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi travel to San Diego from Los Angeles. Though Omar Bayoumi is assumed to drive them, the 9/11 Commission reports (p. 218) states that the two were driven by Mohdar Abdullah, a Yemeni university student in his early 20s. The two sign a four-month lease at Parkwood Apartments (Apartment #150) on 6401 Mount Ada Road, the same apartment complex where...
A South African citizen Istiaque Parker contacts the U.S. embassy in Islamabad with information about Ramzi Yousef's whereabouts. Parker, a jihadi, is acquainted with Yousef had visited him at the Peral Guest House two weeks earlier to discusses a scheme to kidnap the Philippine ambassador to Pakistan, a scheme that was to have secured the release of Hakim Murad, who had been captured in...
A Scheme to kill Osama bin Laden at a remote “falcon hunting camp” in the desert in southern Afghanistan is hatched, when the camp is identified by satellite imagery. The camp is used by members of the United Arab Emirates royal family and other high-level officials, who also quietly pledge to assist in U.S. efforts to kill the al Qaeda head. On February 10,...
While eating at a halal restaurant in Culver City a few blocks away from the King Fahd mosque, would be 9/11 pilots Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi (who arrived in Los Angeles on January 15) meet Omar Bayoumi, a Saudi government intelligence operative. His identity as such is obvious, but even in partially “declassifying” the famous missing “28 pages” from the still partially redacted...
Ziad Jarrah arrives back in Hamburg, the first of the “Hamburg four” to return from Afghanistan, where they received their assignments to be pilots in the “planes operations” being organized by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The four – Jarrah, Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ramzi Binalshibh, went from Kandahar, where they met with Osama bin Laden, to Karachi, where they meet KSM, who provides instruction...
Lebanese citizen Ziad Jarrah, while transiting Dubai on his way from Karachi, Pakistan back to Hamburg, Germany, draws questioning from UAE authorities about an overlay of the Qu’ran that appeared on one page of his passport. It is a sign of travel to Afghanistan and possible involvement in radical Islamic groups. The officials also noticed the religious tapes and books Jarrah had in his...
The CIA Counterterrorist Center (CTC) provides a classified briefing to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in which it states that some 70,000 to 120,000 people were trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979. It is a huge number, but the CIA is unable to precisely answer how many active al Qaeda members there are, nor how many...
In Dubai, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali (Ammar al-Baluchi) deposits $5,000 into the Citibank account of Saudi Hani Hanjour. Hanjour, who would fly the plane into the Pentagon on 9/11, was the last of the four pilots to come onboard with the plot and the only Saudi amongst the pilots. Aziz Ali, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (and often called “Cousin Ali” by...