The Eleventh Day

101 traveled Afghanistan: “Hijackers Timeline [redacted], FBI, 2/1/07, INTELWIRE, Report, JI, 134–, MFR 04019351, 12/10/03. Binalshibh, the sole survivor of the group from Germany, would tell interrogators that they had initially planned to fight in Chechnya. The decision to go instead to Afghanistan, he claimed, was the outcome of an encounter with a man he and two others of the Hamburg group met by chance on a train. This claim may or may not be true. According to Binalshibh, the man on the train—whom he identified as Khalid al-Masri—advised them to talk with a second man named Mohamed Slahi. Slahi, when they went to see him, allegedly said it was difficult to get to Chechnya and suggested they travel instead to Afghanistan via Pakistan. Khalid al-Masri, if he ever existed, has yet to be identified. (He is not the man of the same name who after 9/11was seized in Macedonia by a U.S. “snatch team,” reportedly tortured, and—when CIA officials concluded he had been wrongfully detained—released by being dumped at the roadside in Albania. Slahi was arrested soon after 9/11 and eventually transferred to Guantanamo. A Senate inquiry found that he was subjected to serious ill treatment. Though Slahi admitted having met Binalshibh and his two comrades, he denied having suggested they go to Afghanistan. At the time of writing he remains in Guantanamo but has not been charged. A federal judge ruled in March 2010 that a prosecution of Slahi was impossible because his file was “so tainted by coercion and mistreatment.” In November 2010, a U.S. appeals court ordered the judge to review the case. Mohammed Zammar, meanwhile—who had also reportedly been tortured, not in U.S. custody but in a Syrian jail—told visiting German investigators that he “helped” Binalshibh and the others get to Afghanistan (encounter/? Masri/?advised: CR, 165, 496n90, German translation of interrogation of Binalshibh provided to prosecution in Motassadeq case, Vereinigte Staaten Von Amerika gegen Zacarias Moussaoui, 4/28/05, authors’ collection; snatched/dumped Albania: WP, 12/4/05, The Independent [U.K.], 5/1907; Slahi: Report, “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, 110th Cong. 2nd Sess., 11/20/08, http://armed-services.senate.gov, 138–, Miami Herald, 11/5/10, WP, 3/24/10; Zammar: Der Spiegel, 11/21/05).

102 bodyguard recalled: The bodyguard was Nasser al-Bahri. Fahd al-Quso, a Yemeni interrogated after 9/11, said he, too, had seen Shehhi in Kandahar, when he became sick (Bahri: Newsweek, 9/3/07, Wright, 366 & see Sunday Times [London], 10/1/06; Quso: New Yorker. 7/10 & 17/06);

103 Another jihadi: Bergen, OBL I Know, 262;

104 handwritten note: FBI translation, 12/21/01, “Misc. Requests for Documents, FBI- 03013592, Packet 2,” CF.

105 videotape/“will”: The footage was described in a story by Yosri Fouda in the London Sunday Times on October 1, 2006. The same day, NBC News showed still photos from the videotape. According to the Times article, the videotape was “obtained through a previously tested channel.” The article also said that sources from both al Qaeda and the United States had confirmed the authenticity of the tape, “on condition of anonymity.” Date marks on the footage show that bin Laden was filmed on January 8 and the future hijackers on January 18, 2000. Atta, Jarrah, and Binalshibh apparently were in Afghanistan on both those days. The different date marks seem to indicate that bin Laden was not present when Atta and Jarrah recorded their martyrdom statements. NBC’s story reported, however, that “U.S. government analysis … identifies hijackers Atta and Jarrah in the large crowd at bin Laden’s feet” (Sunday Times [London] & NBC News, 10/1/06).

106 KSM/Binalshibh described: KSM SUBST, CR, 166–, Fouda & Fielding, 123–, 126, Staff Statement 16, CO;

107 Shehhi left/ailment: ibid., CR, 166, New Yorker, 7/10/06, “PENTTBOM, Summary of Captioned Investigation,” 11/5/01, authors’ collection;

108 “middling”: KSM SUBST;

109 oath: Staff Statement 16, CO, CR, 166–. Shehhi had apparently taken the oath before leaving (CR 166–);

110 OBL considered/select targets: KSM SUBST;

111 Jarrah endured: Fouda & Fielding, 128;

112 tricks of trade: KSM SUBST;

113 airline schedules: Staff Statement 16, CO “learning”/“be normal”: KSM SUBST;

114 phone code: New Yorker, 9/13/10;

115 “PlayStation”: Daily Mail (U.K.), 4/17/10;

116 “worked hard”/Hazmi deputy: KSM SUBST; kunyahs: These kunyahs, and all the honorifics assigned to what became a nineteen-man hijack team, appear in Masterminds of Terror, by Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, 110, 121n15.

117 “wonderful evening”: Clinton, 881;

118 Jordan/Zubaydah: NYT, 1/15/01, Tenet, 125;

119 Ressam caught/plan: Counterterrorism to All Field Stations, FBI 265A-SE-83340, etc., 12/29/1999, INTELWIRE, CR, 176–, Staff Statement 15, CO, Richard Clarke, 211, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 140–, NYT, 12/15/01, Burke, 198–, 208–;

120 “aware”: Burke, 209, Report, JI, Appendix, 44, CR, 261;

121 Clinton rang: Coll, Ghost Wars, 487;

122 Berger met: Shenon, 234, 261;

123 wiretap orders: Farmer, 39;

124 “Foreign”: CR, 179;

125 Berger/Clarke Christmas: Richard Clarke, 213, MFR 04021455, 2/13/04;

126 thousands on duty/vigil: Richard Clarke, Testimony of Louis Freeh, 4/13/04, CO;

127 O’Neill: Miller & Stone, 222–.

128 “I think”/“popped”: Richard Clarke, 214. U.S. intelligence worried not only about December 31 as the date of a possible attack, but also about January 3 and 6. The 3rd is considered a night of destiny in Islam, while January 6, 2000, coincided with the end of Ramadan. As discovered later, an attack was indeed planned for the 3rd—a bombing of the U.S. destroyer Sullivans, which was visiting the Yemeni port of Aden. The explosives-loaded boat, however, sank in the surf before the operation could be carried out. This botched effort preceded by nine months the successful attack on the USS Cole, also in Aden, which is covered in Ch. 25. Walid bin Attash, one of the Yemenis bin Laden initially selected for the 9/11 operation, reportedly played a role in planning both bombings (Jan. 3/6: FBI IG; Sullivans/Attash: Staff Statement 2, CO).

129 “They said”: Benjamin & Simon, 313.

130 “All Islamic”: Staff Report, “Monograph on the Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security,” 8/26/04, CF;

131 1998 exercise: Kean & Hamilton, 109, CR, 345;

132 “bin Laden and his”: CR, 128;

133 “unconventional”: Sunday Times (London), 6/9/02;

134 “America”: “New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century,” Commission on National Security, 9/15/99, www.fas.org. The commission was chaired by former U.S. senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman;

135 Library of Congress report: Rex Hudson, “The Sociology & Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?,” Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 9/99, 7, NYT, 5/18/02.

136 America West/“walked into”/door locked/?alerted/?handcuffs/?interrogation: Judgment, Muhammad Al-Qudhai’een et al. v. America West Airlines et al., Case No. C-2-00-1380, US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, 4/30/03 Manager, Chicago Civil Aviation Security Office to Director, undated FAA Memo, “Other Flights 9/11, FAA Memo re America West 90,” B7, T7, CF, Report, JI, 6;

137 “casing”: MFR 04017521, 1/7/04, MFR 04019354, 7/22/03;