9-11 September 11th Warnings Ignored Timeline

Summer 1992 – Emad Salem, an FBI informant who has infiltrated an extreme Islamic fundamentalist group in the US, informs the FBI that Ramzi Yousef and others are planning a truck-bombing of the World Trade Center. The FBI don’t believe him. They reject his offer to replace real explosives with duds and fire him, before re-hiring him after the February 1993 attack which kills six people and injures around a thousand. A second informant inside the group who gave similar warnings to the FBI was also ignored (source = Bovard* 1993 p32-38)

1994 - An Algerian terrorist group threatens to fly a hijacked airliner into the Eiffel tower (Guardian 17 May 2002 ‘US asks: just what did Bush know?’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/may/17/usa.september111)

1996 - ‘In 1996, Abdul Hakim Murad, a Pakistani terrorist convicted of trying to destroy 12 American jumbo jets as they flew over the Pacific, intended to fly a plane into the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. He had learnt to fly at several US flying schools, but the FBI discounted the threat of such suicide attacks.’(Source : Independent 19 May 2002 ‘Bush told in August of specific threat to US’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bush-told-in-august-of-specific-threat-to-us-651658.html
)

1998 – Federal authorities ‘aware that two Osama bin Laden associates had trained in the United States as airplane pilots, possibly while operating as members of the suspected terrorist's organization….US officials were also aware that bin Laden had recruited American citizens to join his Al Qaeda terrorist group and that many of them received military and intelligence training in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Sudan. Members of the organization lived in California, Texas, and Oregon, among other states.’
(Boston Globe 15 Sep 2001 ‘Officials Aware In 1998 of Training’,
http://search.boston.com/local/Search.do?s.sm.query=training&s.author=&s.si%28simplesearchinput%29.sortBy=-articleprintpublicationdate&docType=&s.collections=bostonGlobe%3A&date=&s.startDate=2001-09-15&s.endDate=2001-09-15)

1999 - 1999 Library of Congress report to the US National Intelligence Council warns that “suicide bombers belonging to Al Qaeda…could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the [CIA] or the White House (Source : US Joint Intelligence Committee (Joint Inquiry into the events of September 11, 2002, being conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) ‘The FBI's Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to September 11, 2001’ Statement by Eleanor Hill, Staff Director, Joint Inquiry Staff, September 24, 2002, http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092402hill.html
,cited by Bovard* (2003), Ch3, p45-6 ,385)

March 1999 – German intelligence gives the CIA the name and phone number of one of the future September 11th hijackers. The CIA does not attempt to put him under surveillance(NYT 24 Feb 2004 ‘C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11’,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24TERR.html?ex=1225252800&en=ce51b8f44bd6a30c&ei=5070 )

January 2000 – CIA agents monitor two Al Qaeda members as they go to a meeting of the terrorist group and then fly to the US where they train at flight schools on how to fly large jet planes. The CIA does not inform the FBI or immigration services (Guardian 03 Jun 2002 ‘Hijackers 'trailed by CIA before attacks'’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jun/03/usa.september11 )

April 2000 Niaz Khan, a Pakistani with British citizenship, who claimed to have trained in Al Qaeda camps in Pakistan comes to the FBI offices in New York and warns them Bin Laden plans to hijack a Boeing 747 in the US. The FBI officers are told by superiors to ‘forget it and return him to London’, which they do.
(Sources : Observer 6 Jun 2004 ‘UK spymasters shrugged off al-Qaeda recruit's warning ‘,http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1232389,00.html ; Statement by Eleanor Hill to US JIC http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092402hill.html )

2000 to February 2001 - Members of US military intelligence operation Able Danger discover an Al Qaeda cell including 9-11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Officers including Lt. Col. Anthony Schaffer plan to inform the FBI, but military lawyers order them to cancel planned meetings with the FBI on the unlikely grounds that this would have ‘violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States’.
(New York Times 17 Aug 2005 ‘Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists’, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/politics/17intel.html?pagewanted=print)

June 2001 - The Egyptian government warns the American and Italian governments of an intercepted Al Qaeda communication saying Bin Laden plans to crash a plane packed with explosives into the G8 summit meeting in Genoa. (Source : Guardian 27 Sep 2001, ‘G8 summit may have been Bin Laden target’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/27/globalisation.afghanistan )

July 2001 Anti-aircraft missile batteries are set up at Genoa airport for the G8 summit leaders’ arrival based on the Egyptian warning
(Source: Independent newspaper, Independent 20 July2001 ‘Genoa summit: Anti-aircraft guns and 150,000 protesters await world's leaders’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/genoa-summit-antiaircraft-guns-and-150000-protesters-await-worlds-leaders-678349.html)

July 2001 FBI agent Kenneth Williams sends the Phoenix Memorandum to FBI headquarters, warnings that many people, possibly linked to Bin Laden’s hijacking plot, are learning to fly at the same flight school in Phoenix, Arizona. The memo is ignored by his superiors.(CNN 15 May 2002 ‘Senator: U.S. didn't connect 'dots' before 9/11’,
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/05/15/inv.fbi.terror/index.html

August 2001 – A flight school instructor in Nevada phones FBI agents to warn that one of his students – Zacharias Moussaoui - wants to learn how to take off in a plane, but not to land it – and that a plane full of jet fuel could be crashed into buildings as ‘a flying bomb’ (Minneapolis Star Tribune ‘Eagan Flight Trainer Wouldn't Let Unease About Moussaoui Rest’, http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=11642646)

August 2001 – Coleen Rowley and other FBI agents arrest Moussaoui, notify FBI headquarters that they believe he is part of a larger hijacking plot by Bin Laden and that the plan is to crash planes into buildings. Senior FBI HQ staff refuse their agents’ plea to request warrants from the Department of Justice to allow them to search Moussaoui’s flat and computer, even after French intelligence confirms Moussaoui’s links to violent extremist groups. When they finally agree to request a different type of warrant from the DoJ the FBI HQ staff don’t include information that their agents had requested be included, or any of the information provided by French intelligence. Even after 9-11 FBI HQ claims the plot discovered by Rowley and others was a ‘co-incidence’ and nothing to do with the September 11th attacks. The HQ staff are later promoted. (Sources : US Joint Intelligence Committee (Joint Inquiry into the events of September 11, 2002, being conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) ‘The FBI's Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to September 11, 2001’ Statement by Eleanor Hill, Staff Director, Joint Inquiry Staff, September 24, 2002, http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092402hill.html
Cited by Bovard* (2003), Ch3 ;
Minneapolis Star Tribune ‘Eagan Flight Trainer Wouldn't Let Unease About Moussaoui Rest’, http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=11642646; USA Today 28 May 2002 ‘Letter shifts heat to FBI’,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/28/letter-fbi.htm ; Time Magazine 21 May 2002 ‘The Bombshell Memo : Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller - An edited version of the agent's 13-page letter’,
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html )

6 August 2001 - A US intelligence memo, delivered to President Bush at his ranch in August 2001, stated 'Clandestine, foreign government and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America".....Al Qa'ida members - including some who are U.S citizens - have resided in or traveled to the US for years...A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks...We have not been able to corroborate...that in 1998..,Bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft. Nevertheless FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.' The Bush administration made no attempt to improve airport security even after this memo and other warnings from the FBI and CIA.
(Source = National Security Archive of the United States, 'President's Daily Brief, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" 6 August 2001 (2 pp.), declassified 10 April 2004' , http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/index.htm#docs and http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/pdb8-6-2001.pdf )

* = Bovard, James (2003) ‘Terrorism and Tyranny : Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil’, Palgrave MacMillan, N.Y & Houndmills, U.K, 2003, paperback edition, Chapter 3