Anthony Summers - The Eleventh Day

29 drop out?/called Aysel/​ticket/​“emotional”:CR, 246–, Staff Statement 16, CO, MFR 04019350, 3/18/04, CR, Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE.

30 Binalshibh told KSM:How we come to know about this exchange, which was conducted on the phone, will be discussed in Ch. 30. If meant literally, the reference to cost in the conversation is odd (and perhaps merely code) unless, as the Commission was to surmise, KSM was referring to the cost and trouble of organizing a replacement hijacking pilot. The notional replacement, the commission thought, was likely Zacarias Moussaoui, the French-born terrorist who had been sent to the United States for pilot training early in 2001. During his conversation with Binalshibh, KSM authorized the sending of “skirts” to “Sally,” an instruction believed to mean that Binalshibh was to send Moussaoui $14,000. Binalshibh did so in early August. According to KSM, however, he at no stage contemplated using Moussaoui as a pilot on the 9/11 operation, but rather in a later “second wave” of attacks. As will emerge later in this chapter, Moussaoui would be detained in August because of his suspect behavior at a flight school in Minnesota (CR, 246–, Indictment, 12/01 & Superceding Indictment, 7/02, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui , Staff Statement 16, CO).

31 “We spent”:Aysel Sengün statement to Bundeskriminalamt, 9/15/01, authors’ collection;

32 apartment:Jarrah timeline, “03009470, Packet 6, Ziad Jarrah chronology,” www.scribd.com;

33 “This House”: Newsweek , 9/24/01;

34 “big planes”:int. Rosmarie Canel by Hannah Cleaver;

35 GPS:Jarrah timeline;

36 Atta/Hazmi stopped by police:Hijackers Timeline [redacted], 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, Mohamed Mohamed Elamir Awad Elsayed Atta, Enforcement Operations Division, Texas Service Center, Intelligence Division, INS, “Hijacker Primary Documents—AA11,” B51, T5, CF, & see Graham with Nussbaum, 36–;

37 “Every cop”:MFR of George Tenet, 12/23/03, CF;

38 “five or six weeks”:Staff Statement 16, CO, CR, 243;

39 “Salaam”:McDermott, 225.

40 warnings:Chicago attorney David Schippers said soon after 9/11 that he had received information on a coming terror attack on Manhattan and that—“a month before the bombing”—he had tried to get a warning to Attorney General Ashcroft. He said he was never able to reach Ashcroft and was brushed off by Justice Department officials. Schippers’s sources, he said, included FBI agents and policemen. In the summer of 2001, Schippers was attorney for Chicago FBI counterterrorism agent Robert Wright, whose book—a “blueprint on how the events of September 11 were inevitable”—was to be suppressed by the FBI. Schippers had also become a vocal advocate for Jayna Davis, an Oklahoma journalist whose research on the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building posits a Middle East connection to that attack (see Ch. 22). The warnings Schippers said he attempted to pass on were not just of a coming attack on New York City but also covered Davis’s research and information on the infiltration of the United States by the Palestinian group Hamas. The totality of his information, Schippers later concluded, was to lead people to think he was “crazy.” Schippers had earlier served as chief investigative counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment probe of President Clinton (int. David Schippers, The Alex Jones Show , 10/10/01, www.infowars.com, Indianapolis Star , 5/18/02, Chicago magazine, 10/02, Jayna Davis, The Third Terrorist , Nashville: WND, 2004, Foreword).

41 DGSE:“Motley Submissions—French Intelligence Passed to the U.S.—Moussaoui—Planes as Weapons Widely Known,” B10, T2, CF, “Oussama Bin Laden,” leaked DGSE report, 9/13/01, seen by authors.

42 Russian FSB;AFP, 9/16/01’;

43 “20 al Qaeda”: 60 Minutes II: The Plot , CBS, 10/9/02.

44 Muttawakil:Muttawakil’s information was given him, according to the emissary, by the head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yildash. The detail is relevant, for the earliest French intelligence information on bin Laden’s hijacking plans came from Uzbek contacts (see pp. 308–9). Following the U.S. rout of the Taliban regime that he had predicted, former Taliban minister Muttawakil surrendered in early 2002, was for some time held in American custody, then freed. His emissary, who told his story on condition of anonymity, stayed on in Kabul—apparently at liberty. U.S. diplomat David Katz declined to discuss the episode when contacted in 2002. The story was reported by the BBC and the British newspaper The Independent , based on an interview of the emissary by the journalist Kate Clark (BBC News, The Independent [U.K.], 9/7/02).

45 plans postponed:CR, 259, 534n28;

46 “will still happen”:ibid., 260, 534n32;

47 Miller/“very spun-up”:FBI IG;

48 slow progress/“But the Principals’ ”:Testimony of Richard Clarke, 4/8/04, CO;

49 Bush vacation/“I’m sure”:ABC News, 8/3/01, AP, 8/6/01, USA Today , 8/3/01;

50 Cheney: Jackson Hole News & Guide (Wyoming), 8/15/01;

51 poll/“too much”: USA Today , 8/6/01, “Public Critical of Bush’s Vacation Plans,” 8/7/01, www.gallup.com, WP , 8/7/01. As things turned out, the president was to return to Washington a few days earlier than planned, on August 30 (Public Papers of the Presidents, George W. Bush, 2001, www.gpoaccess.gov, 1569);

52 CBS re PDB/“bin Laden’s”:“What Bush Knew Before September 11,” 5/17/02, www.cbsnews.com;

53 Fleischer/“very generalized”:press briefing, 5/16/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.gov;

54 Fleischer follow-up:press briefing, 5/17/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.gov;

55 Rice/“not a warning”/“an analytic”/“hijacking”/“could have”:press briefing, 5/16/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov;

56 “historical”:ibid., Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO;

57 struggle:e.g. Report, JI, 1, Kean & Hamilton, 89–;

58 “the most highly”:press briefing by Ari Fleischer, 5/21/02, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.gov;

59 CIA refused:Report, JI, 1;

60 several released:Thomas Blanton, “The President’s Daily Brief,” National Security Archive, 4/12/04, www.gwu.edu;

61 leather binder:Tenet, 31;

62 “top-secret”:Graham, with Nussbaum, 80;

63 “news digest”:Blanton, “The President’s Daily Brief”;

64 truly secret/dull:ibid., Shenon, 220;

65 Joint Inquiry pressed:Report, JI, 1;

66 Commission/“What did”:Kean & Hamilton, 89–, Zelikow to Kean & Hamilton, Proposal for Breaking PDB Impasse, 9/25/03, “Letters & Memos, Negotiations over Access to PDBs,” B6, Dan Marcus files, CF;

67 “blowtorch”:Ben-Veniste, 239;

68 heading had not read: The Washington Post had reported the correct headline as early as May 19, 2002, two days after Fleischer misstated it. The significance of the press secretary’s omission of the word “in,” however, got lost in the fog of the subsequent White House effort to minimize the PDB’s overall importance (“Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer,” 5/17/02, www.gwu.edu, WP , 5/19/02, Nation , 4/12/04).