Anthony Summers - The Eleventh Day

71 rated a seven:Tenet, 145–;

72 was “recruiting”/high alert:CR, 256–;

73 “very, very”/Clarke duly:CR, 257, Bamford, Shadow Factory , 55;

74 July 10 assessment/“There will”/“put his elbows”:Tenet, 150–.

75 “felt”/“The decision”/“Adults”:Bob Woodward, State of Denial , NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006, 49–. It seems clear from this passage—in his 2006 book, State of Denial —that he interviewed Cofer Black. Also, perhaps, former CIA director Tenet. While Woodward reported that Tenet left the meeting “feeling frustrated,” Tenet stated in his memoir the following year that Black and the head of the Agency’s bin Laden unit departed feeling that “at last … we had gotten the full attention of the administration.” Within two days, a congressional report shows, Tenet went to the Capitol to give a similar briefing to U.S. senators. Only a handful turned up. It was a mystery to him, Tenet wrote, why the 9/11 Commission Report failed to mention the July 10 meeting with Rice—he had told the commissioners about the encounter in closed testimony. It was established that Tenet had indeed told the Commission of the meeting. As others have noted, the Commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, was closer to Rice and other Bush appointees than was healthy for a man heading a supposedly even-handed investigation—he had even coauthored a book with Rice. According to 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, Tenet thought Rice “understood the level of urgency he was communicating.”

“It is shocking,” Peter Rundlet, a former Commission counsel, has written, “that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know. Many, many questions need to be asked and answered about this revelation” (meeting: Woodward,

State of Denial

, 50–, Tenet, 151–; congressional report: Report, “Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today,” Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 111th Cong., 1st Sess.,

U.S. Govt. Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 11/30/09, 4; indeed given:

WP

, 10/3/06; Zelikow: e.g., Shenon, 40–, 65–, 106–, Woodward,

State of Denial

, 52; understood: McClatchy Newspapers, 10/2/06; Rundlet: Peter Rundlet, “Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting from 9/11 Commission,”

http://thinkprogress.org

).

76 Black/Scheuer/UBL unit head resignations:MFR 03009296, 9/3/03, Shenon, 395, CR, 259–;

77 “The purpose”/Williams concerns/​Zubaydah/​connected/​Hanjour/​Williams recommended:Phoenix, Squad 16 to Counterterrorism, 7/10/01, www.justice.gov, FBI IG, Statement of Eleanor Hill re “The FBI’s Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to Sept. 11, 2001,” 9/24/02 [as updated 10/17/02]. The suspicious activity on the America West flight, which may have been reconnaissance for the 9/11 operation, is described in Ch. 24;

78 minimal circulation: NYT , 6/10/05, Amy B. Zegart, Spying Blind , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, 261n55;

79 “racial profiling”:Report, JI, 5;

80 “exercise”:NLETS Message (All Regions), from Counterterrorism, 7/2/01, INTELWIRE;

81 “I had asked”:Richard Clarke, 236–.

82 “I don’t want”:The Justice Department told the Commission that Ashcroft, his former deputy, and his chief of staff denied that he had made such a comment to Pickard. Ashcroft himself also denied it in his April 2004 Commission testimony. Pickard, for his part, reiterated his allegation in testimony, in Commission interviews, in a letter to the commission—and in a later long interview with reporter Philip Shenon. The commission was unable to resolve the contradictory accounts. It found, though, that—whatever the truth about the Ashcroft/Pickard relationship, “The domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction, and did not have a plan” (Justice Dept./Ashcroft denials: Hearing transcript & Testimony of Ashcroft, 4/13/04, CO; Pickard: CR, 265, 536n52, Shenon, 246, 432n, Ch. 35).

83 “Fishing rod”/“Frankly”:CBS News, 7/26/01. Ashcroft and senior FBI officials had received recent briefings on the increased terrorist threat level. It is conceivable, however, that the decision that Ashcroft not fly commercial was taken because of threats of a different nature. From early on, reportedly, there had been threats to Ashcroft’s personal safety—sparked by his opposition to abortion and gun control (briefings: CR, 258, MFR 04019823, 6/3/04, e.g. Briefing Material, Weekly with Attorney General, 7/12/01, “Ashcroft,” B1, Dan Marcus files, CF; threats: Shenon, 243–).

84 G8 summit:CR, 258, Shenon, 243–;

85 slept ships/Pope/airspace:BBC News, 6/21/01, CNN, 7/17/01, WP , 1/19/02, NYT , 9/26/01.

86 Mubarak:Benjamin & Simon, 342, Daily Record (Glasgow), 9/27/01. Warnings of a possible bin Laden attack at Genoa, specifically targeting Bush, also reportedly came from German and Russian intelligence. There were also concerns that violent protest might disturb public order during the summit (BBC News, 6/27/01, CNN, 7/17/01).

CHAPTER 27

1

Dubai/passport copied:

New Yorker

, 7/10/06, Wright, 311, Report, JI, 144, but see Bamford,

Shadow Factory

, 18–.

2

CIA had not placed:

In spite of the discovery of an internal CIA cable alleging that the visa information had been shared with the FBI, complex investigation did nothing to substantiate the assertion. Other documents, the 9/11 Commission reported, “contradict” the claim that the visa information was shared with the Bureau. The Commission flatly states that “no one alerted the INS or the FBI” to look for Mihdhar or his traveling companion, Nawaf al-Hazmi (CR, 502n44, 354, & see Tenet, 195).

3

Mihdhar/visas/July 4:

Staff Report, 9/11 & Terrorist Travel, 33–, 37;

4

two groups/NJ/Fort Lauderdale:

CR, 230, 240, 248, 253,

WP

, 9/30/01, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

5

Mihdhar/crammed:

ibid., CR, 240–, McDermott,

221;

6

Hazmi bride:

CR, 222,

marriage obligatory:

Fouda & Fielding, 81, & see, e.g., “The Importance of Marriage in Islam,”

www.sunniforum.com

.

7

Atta:

Chicago Tribune

, 9/11/04,

Newsweek

, 10/1/01, Bernstein, 105, MFR 04017500, 12/4/03. In a 2004 book, author Daniel Hopsicker gave an account of a supposed relationship, covering periods in 2000 and 2001, between Atta and a young woman named Amanda Keller. Widely circulated on the Internet, the account presents a picture of a deeply unpleasant character who—were the account to prove accurate—frequented sleazy nightspots, beat his girlfriend, and—in one savage incident—killed and dismembered one of her cats and an entire litter of kittens. After lengthy analysis of a tangled scenario, however, the authors concluded that this has been a matter of mistaken identity. A young woman who—according to the Hopsicker account—accompanied Atta and Keller on a trip to the Florida Keys did not recognize pictures of the authentic Atta as the “Mohamed” who made the trip. Keller’s mother and sister are reported as having said that her Mohamed was “tall,” “lanky,” while Atta was only five foot seven. She said early on her boyfriend was French Canadian, and that he told her he had fathered a child in France. That could of course have been a lie—except for another element. According to Keller, the name her Mohamed used at one point to sign a document was “Mohamed Arajaki”—and an official list of men of interest to law enforcement after 9/11 includes a reference to an “Arakj, Mohamad” with a French address.