5 November 1990

Posted on November 5, 2020November 6, 2020 by William Arkin

Rabbi Meir Kahane, an American-born Zionist extremist and founder of the Jewish Defense League, is assassinated at a Marriott Hotel in midtown Manhattan. It is perhaps the first case of radical Islamic terrorism on America’s shores, and certainly a precursor to all that would follow, from the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center to 9/11.

El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born American citizen, infiltrated the hotel, where Kahane was giving a speech. Others who were later involved in the February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center accompanied him or waited outside in getaway cars.

As Kahane was leaving the ballroom, Nosair shot him twice, killing him. He ran from the room, shouting “It’s Allah’s will!” At the door, a man tried to stop him and Nosair shot him in the leg and fled. Confronted by a U.S. postal police officer outside the hotel, Nosair also shot him. The officer, wearing a bulletproof vest, fired back, hitting Nosair, who was taken to Bellevue hospital.

Nosair was acquitted of the murder but convicted of lesser, related charges. When federal agents raided Nosair’s New Jersey residence after his arrest, they found many incriminating items, including a sermon by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (the “Blind Sheikh”) that urged followers to attack “the edifices of capitalism.” He would be later convicted on terrorist conspiracy to life in prison. FBI investigators reportedly later found that Osama bin Laden had paid for Nosair’s defense.

4 November 1998

Posted on November 4, 2020November 6, 2020 by William Arkin

Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda lieutenants are indicted in the Southern District of New York.

The unsealed indictment, resulting from the African embassy bombings, included bin Laden; al Qaeda operational chief Mohammed Atef; Wadih El Hage, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (also known as Harun Fazul); Mohamed Sadiq Odeh; and Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali. Both bin Laden and Atef are added to the Department of State Rewards Program.

The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hizballah. The original sealed indictment, according to the 9/11 Commission (p. 128) had added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.” Interestingly, this language about al Qaeda’s “understanding” with Iraq was dropped from the final indictment filed in November 1998.

Upon the indictment, a threat advisory was sent by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) headquarters to all immigration inspectors at ports of entry. It warned of possible infiltration into the United States by radical Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to bin Laden. It calls for “hard” inspections of certain visitors from Middle Eastern countries. It seems to have no effect whatsoever.

CIA director George Tenet would later write: “I can’t imagine this fazed him in the least since he was living comfortably in his Afghan sanctuary.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 109)

3 November 1999

Posted on November 3, 2020November 6, 2020 by William Arkin

Able Danger is born, certainly one of the strangest, over-hyped and forgotten pre-9/11 phantasms of the intelligence community.

U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), nominally engaged in counter-terrorism in a war that is not yet a war, seeks to exploit new datamining techniques to network terrorist organizations. SOCOM contacts the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC) in Dahlgren, Virginia and the Army’s Information Dominance Center at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, both of which are pioneers in systems and cyber analysis.

In the words of retired Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (participant, whistleblower, television commentator), JWAC “did not understand the scope of trying to do neural-netting, human factor relationships and looking at linkages. They just didn’t have the capability at the time.” Instead, the Able Danger project partnered with the Army IDC, its own super-secret slush fund for research and development.

Eventually, the Defense Intelligence Agency would take over the Able Danger project and shut it down, mostly because the participants had violated civil liberties rules and collected information on Americans.

But the participants—Shaffer being the most vocal—would claim after 9/11 that there was some nefarious reason for the project to be halted. And not only that, but that Able Danger managed to identify Mohammed Atta and could have prevented the attacks.

It is, in hindsight, an impossibility, for none of Atta’s personal details were known to any agency, and nor was he ever living in Brooklyn, which Shaffer asserts. The whole Able Danger controversy eventually led to Congressional hearings and lots of recriminations, but the real lesson learned—that these boutique and off-the-books projects rarely produce anything, was never learned.

2 November 1999

Posted on November 2, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

The 24/7 millennium threat surge begins at the CIA and throughout the intelligence community. The threat of a terrorist attack over the millennium celebrations, together with any threats associated with the Y2K computer rollover, become the top priority for the entire intelligence community.

The CIA creates an elaborate disruption campaign against al Qaeda and other cells of terrorists, particularly in Jordan and Lebanon, and indeed Jordanian officials arrested a number of terrorists linked to al Qaeda.

Between November and the millennium, the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and other elements of the government’s counter-terror apparatus worked overtime and on supplemental budgets, both of which would have profound effects later on activities in 2000 as more secure funding was sought and the primary counter-terrorism personnel adjusted to “normal” schedules.

Did the millennium itself justify the resources? And did the government pay the price for its focus on stopping a single terrorist strike (and then relaxing once it did)? One will never know, but the effect of anniversary warnings—whether it be July 4th before 9/11, or September 11th—ever since has served to focus more attention on tactical and short-term interdiction rather than the big picture.

1 November 1998

Posted on November 1, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

Mohammed Atta, Said Bahaji and Ramzi Binalshibh move into a four bedroom apartment at 54 Marienstrasse in Hamburg, Germany. It becomes known as the house of martyrs and over the 28 months that Atta’s name is on the lease, 29 Middle Eastern and North African men live in the apartment or register it as their home address.

Up to six men at a time live at the apartment, including other al Qaeda operatives, particularly Atta’s partner Marwan al-Shehhi. Atta, Binalshibh and al-Shehhi (together with a fourth of the “Hamburg Group,” Ziad Jarrah) travel to Afghanistan together to participate in jihad and are recruited for the plane’s operation. Binalshibh would relocate to Berlin after this and become a middle-man to the pilot hijackers in the United States, unable to obtain an American visa.

Marientstrasse would become famous later for the Islamic activity going on under the noses of German authorities. Many of its residents would later be arrested.

31 October 2000

Posted on October 31, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

President Clinton signs additional covert action authorities for fighting al Qaeda, including expanding the number of individuals who were subject to capture operations. The formal presidential “findings,” a series of six Memorandum of Notifications, built upon previous (July 1999) covert action authorities already granted to the CIA.

Authority to undertake capture operations are specified by individuals and by country as to what assistance and circumstances the Agency can seek foreign government (and foreign organization) help. There are no “lethal” authorities per se, though obviously in 1998, cruise missile attacks against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda sought to kill the leader.

CIA Director George Tenet is also instructed to develop additional capabilities beyond those already granted in 1999, such as strengthening relationships with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and Uzbek groups in Afghanistan. Another Memorandum calls for covert action to fight the expansion of al Qaeda into Lebanon.

30 October 2000

Posted on October 30, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

Sandy Berger passes the baton to Condoleezza Rice

After the attack on the USS Cole, but absent any “proof” of al Qaeda culpability, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger agrees to a State Department proposal making another approach to the Taliban to expel Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan.

U.S. diplomats had already been in touch with Deputy Foreign Minister Abdul Jalil and now Berger orders that the U.S. message to the Taliban “be stern and foreboding.”

Meanwhile, the Clinton administration is also working with the Russian government on new U.N. sanctions against Mullah Omar’s regime.

Between 1998 and 9/11, the United States issued a half dozen threats to the Taliban, both about bin Laden and support for al Qaeda, and to protest the treatment of women. None of the warnings had any effect.

29 October 2000

Posted on October 30, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

Unknown to U.S. intelligence, Ziad Jarrah (the hijacker pilot of United Airlines flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania) returns to the United States from a trip to Germany just two weeks after the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was the first of five foreign trips he would take during his time in the United States.

It was the first or last time that Jarrah would depart from the United States to see his common law wife, Aysel Senguen. As the most westernized of the hijackers, and also married, Jarrah was relatively invisible to immigration and customs officials. The 9/11 Commission later reported that Jarrah “made hundreds of phone calls to her and communicated frequently by email” during his stay in the United States (911 Commission, p. 224) but because they were in German–and were mostly love letters and other communications dealing with the day-to-day lives of the two–U.S. intelligence never paid attention.

Jarrah flew from Atlanta, Georgia to Frankfurt, Germany on Delta Flight 20 on October 7, just five days before the Cole was attacked. Mohammed Atta (the plot’s emir in the U.S.) worried that given the terrorist attack, he might not be able to return, with intelligence vigilance and police measures being tightened. Jarrah and Aysel went to Paris for a late honeymoon while al Qaeda pondered whether it lost one of its valuable pilots.

Finally, on the 29th, Jarrah arrived back in the United States, flying from Dusseldorf, Germany (Condor Flight 7178) to Frankfurt and on to Tampa, Florida (Lufthansa Flight 223). On a tourist visa, he received a six-month length of stay in the United States. Immigration and customs asked nothing.

28 October 2000

Posted on October 28, 2020October 30, 2020 by William Arkin

The only known drop-out amongst the 9/11 hijackers, Mushabib al Hamlan, a Saudi, acquires a two-year B1/B2 (tourist/business) visa for the United States. He never travels to the U.S. and the 9/11 Commission later speculates that perhaps he dropped out “at the urging of his family.”

Mushabib is friends with Ahmed al Nami, one of four hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. (Another clue that Mushabib was to be the fifth “muscleman” about UA 93 was that all the other four planes had five hijackers.)

On the same day Mushabib applies for his visa in Jeddah, his friend Ahmed al Nami, a Saudi, applies for and receives a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa. A later review of Nami’s application to the State Department revealed that it was incomplete. He listed his occupations as “student” but did not provide a complete address for his school, as we required. And he listed his intended address in the United States as “in Los Angeles” even though he never went there. Nami’s passport may have contained fraudulent travel stamps to obscure al Qaeda-related travel. On his application, Nami indicated that “my friend Moshabab” would be traveling with him.

27 October 2000

Posted on October 27, 2020October 30, 2020 by William Arkin

Army Gen. Peter Jan Schoomaker retires as SOCOM commander, replaced by Air Force Gen. Charles Holland.

At Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Schoomaker had replaced Gen. Henry (“Hugh”) Shelton, who became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had previously served as the commanding general of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from July 1994 to August 1996, followed by command of the United States Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

A known conservative and aggressive special operations man, Schoomaker wanted to take action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan but was never able to gain approval.

After 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld found Gen. Holland way too passive and doctrinaire in employing America’s secret forces in Afghanistan. Though he also had a prodigious special operations background (and had served as deputy commanding general of JSOC), Rumsfeld iced him out, maybe as well because he hadn’t appointed him.

From the sidelines, Schoomaker—now a defense contractor—kibbitzed on tactics and strategy for the burgeoning global war on terror and the increased use of special operations. On August 1, 2003, Rumsfeld brought Schoomaker out of retirement to be the 35th chief of staff of the Army and a close advisor.