Author: William Arkin

16 September 1920

Posted on by William Arkin
1920 Wall Street bombing

 

The first American case of a spectacular terrorist attack occurs, nearly a century ago! An unknown man drove a horse-drawn cart to the front of the U.S. Assay Office across from the J. P. Morgan building in the heart of Wall Street in New York City. Minutes later, a bomb exploded, immediately killing 30 and injuring 300, according to most accounts. The carnage is horrific, and the death toll kept rising as the day wore on and more victims succumbed.

A resulting three-year investigation—involving the New York police and fire departments, the predecessor agency of the FBI, and the Secret Service—would largely prove fruitless. A local letter carrier found four crudely spelled and printed flyers from a group calling itself the “American Anarchist Fighters” that demanded the release of Italian political prisoners, but other than that, there was little evidence as to who the perpetrator was. Even to this day, the responsible party remains a mystery.

15 September 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

A year before 9/11, Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, the hijacker pilots who will later attack the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, fill out Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) forms to change their visa status from tourists to vocational students.

The two—Atta an Egyptian citizen, and al-Shehhi from the United Arab Emirates—had already been in the United States for three months and had begun flight training, mostly at Huffman Aviation at Venice Municipal Airport in Venice, Florida. Both applications request that their status be maintained until September 1, 2001. The requests show deception in the earlier status, but neither receives additional scrutiny from visa authorities with regard to what they are doing in the United States.

14 September 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The United States formally warns the fledgling Taliban regime in Afghanistan (through a diplomatic demarche) that it will hold it responsible for any terrorist attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda—that is, so long as the Taliban continues to provide sanctuary to the group and to Osama bin Laden.

The government in Sudan receives similar warnings.

A month after the twin attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan William Milam meets with Taliban representatives. They tell him that it “against their culture to expel someone seeking sanctuary but asked what would happen to Bin Ladin [sic] should he be sent to Saudi Arabia.” (911 Commission Report, p. 121) It is neither the first nor the last overtures to the Taliban regime regarding bin Laden. In fact, quite astoundingly, we are still negotiating with them today, despite a 20-year war in Afghanistan.

13 September 1987

Posted on by William Arkin
USS Butte

 

Fawaz Younis becomes the first suspected foreign terrorist arrested by the FBI for a crime perpetrated against Americans on foreign soil. Younis was implicated in the 1985 hijacking of a Royal Jordanian airliner. After taking the passengers hostage—including two Americans—and making several demands that were not met, the hijackers ordered the plane to land first in Cyprus, then Sicily, and finally in Beirut. There the hijackers released the hostages, held a press conference, blew up the plane on the tarmac, and then successfully fled.

The Bureau made the arrest two years later under the provisions of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which gave the FBI jurisdiction over terrorist acts in which Americans were harmed or taken hostage, no matter where the acts occurred.

Younis was lured to his arrest in an FBI sting called Operation Goldenrod in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It involved bikini-clad undercover agents, a multi-million-dollar yacht with a fake crew, and a non-existent international drug dealer. Younis was arrested and taken aboard the USS Butte, a Navy munitions ship. He was then transported to the United States on a Navy plane, where he was arraigned, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. (As a final footnote, Younis was released in 2005 and deported to Lebanon.)

The FBI would go on to investigate al Qaeda terrorist attacks that involved American citizens—including the African embassy bombings in 1998 and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000—certainly establishing expertise (and connections), but ultimately focused on terrorism as a crime to be investigated rather than as an eventuality to be prevented.

12 September 1994

Posted on by William Arkin
Osama bin Laden

 

Osama bin Laden, an obscure 37-year-old ideologue from Saudi Arabia, began to write a series of open letters as “The Committee for Advice and Reform” to then-King Fahd, to prominent princes and religious figures in the country, and to “the people of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula.”

The publicly-shared letters, written between 1994 and 1998, begin to express bin Laden’s worldview and radicalism, first in publicly speaking out about the situation in Saudi Arabia, and second, in laying out a set of grievances that prevent Arab fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan from returning to their home countries (with the end of the Soviet occupation).

Seven years before 9/11, bin Laden talks of the insults and “apostasy” of American military forces deployed to Saudi Arabia after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and even accuses King Fahd of “wearing a cross.” He addresses corruption in the country, the uneven application of Shariah law, what he claims are overtures and accommodations with Israel, and even the poor state of the Saudi armed forces, given how much money Saudi Arabia has spent on arms.

“The gulf crisis [the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait] revealed the lack of preparedness, the need for [foreign] troops, and the ineptitude of its leadership. All of these shortcomings exist in spite of the astronomical amounts that have been spent on the military,” bin Laden wrote—all accurate portrayals and a reality that persists to this day as demonstrated in the disastrous Saudi-run war in Yemen.

“The regime also imported Christian women to defend it, thereby placing the army in the highest degree of shame, disgrace, and frustration,” bin Laden wrote, references to his own brand of fundamental Islam—what would become central to al Qaeda ideology.

The letters are rhetorical, inflammatory, and inaccurate to the Western reader but also a clear indictment of the family Saud and other Arab rulers. The letters in many ways are as erroneous as they are prescient in laying out bin Laden’s and al Qaeda’s grievances, but they are also so obscure in their focus and references that they were hardly noticed in the West. They form a rich source, and yet were little known, even after al Qaeda’s early attacks on America, certainly a missed opportunity to understand what drove so many to take up arms in this new brand of international and anti-American terrorism.