The Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), Germany’s federal anticrime agency, obtains a DNA sample for one of the 9/11 hijackers, alleged Flight 93 pilot Ziad Jarrah, after a search of the home of his girlfriend, Aysel Senguen. After the BKA sends the sample to the FBI, the bureau matches it with the DNA profile of one of four sets of unknown human remains recovered from the site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed. According to an FBI report provided to the 9/11 Commission, presumably sometime between 2003 and 2004, no relatives of the alleged 9/11 hijackers provide the bureau with DNA samples for comparison. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2003]
After September 11, 2001: Russian-Born Businessman Provides US Intelligence with Information about Al-Qaeda
Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman, works as a spy for American intelligence and provides it with valuable information about al-Qaeda. [BuzzFeed News, 3/12/2018] Sater started working for US intelligence around 1997 and since then has been assisting the CIA, the FBI, and other agencies. He has obtained information on al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, including five of bin Laden’s personal satellite telephone numbers (see (1997-September 11, 2001)). [US Department of Justice, 8/27/2009 
; Politico, 5/16/2019; ABC News, 8/23/2019] But he doubles his efforts after the 9/11 attacks, he will later state. [US Congress. House, 12/2017] His handlers urge him to find any relevant information and, at the direction of the FBI, he heads to the Middle East to collect intelligence on key leaders in al-Qaeda. He then gathers much information during his travels there. [BuzzFeed News, 3/12/2018] His activities include: 
Turning the personal secretary of Mullah Omar, the head of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, into a source. This man then provides copies of al-Qaeda passports and information on jihadi escape routes, as well the locations of al-Qaeda training camps, fighters, and weapons caches. Providing the names of al-Qaeda operatives. Providing details of American companies that are fronts for al-Qaeda. Providing details of the financial networks behind the 9/11 attackers and other al-Qaeda members around the world. Identifying a New Mexico company believed to be laundering terrorism funds in the US. [US Congress. House, 12/2017; BuzzFeed News, 3/12/2018] Providing information regarding the whereabouts of bin Laden. [US Department of Justice, 8/27/2009 ] Providing details of a potential assassination plot against President Bush. Providing details of a potential assassination attempt on Secretary of State Colin Powell, including information regarding specific plans by al-Qaeda fighters to bring his plane down when he is visiting Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. [US Congress. House, 12/2017] Reporting on the results of US bombings in Afghanistan. [US Department of Justice, 8/27/2009 ; US Congress. House, 12/2017; BuzzFeed News, 3/12/2018] Providing information regarding which tribal structures might be coerced into abandoning the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and switching their allegiance to the Northern Alliance or other US-supported groups in Afghanistan. [US Congress. House, 12/2017]
Sater is “an exemplary cooperator who worked diligently to further the aims of the missions to which he was assigned,” according to the agents who supervise his activities. He provides a “massive amount of assistance” in defense of the US, and his intelligence work “significantly enhanced and potentially saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands of military personnel, before and during military operations carried out in hostile countries,” he will state. He also assists US intelligence in areas besides the war on terror, such as North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, Russian organized crime, La Cosa Nostra organized crime families, international cyber criminals, and financial fraud. [US Department of Justice, 8/27/2009 ; US Congress. House, 12/2017; BuzzFeed News, 3/12/2018] He becomes known after the 2016 US presidential election for his business ties to then President Donald Trump. [CBS News, 11/29/2018; Hill, 5/16/2019; ABC News, 8/23/2019]
After September 11, 2001: Unlike Previous Incidents, NTSB Does Not Investigate 9/11 Plane Crashes
In the weeks following 9/11, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) assists the FBI in its response to the attacks. Over 60 NTSB employees work at the scenes of the crashes—the Pentagon, Pennsylvania, and New York—and at the board’s headquarters in Washington, DC, helping to identify aircraft parts, searching for and analyzing the flight recorders, and assisting the victims’ families. [National Transportation Safety Board, 9/13/2001; US Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, 6/25/2002] However, unusually, none of the four planes that crashed are the subject of formal NTSB investigations. According to Vern Grose, a highly respected air disaster analyst and former NTSB member: “First of all, after any aircraft crash, the NTSB [normally] launches what they call a ‘go team’ within two hours and that go team will have up to twelve people on it. Specialists in airframe, in engines, in electronics, in human factors. And these folks all go to the scene—they isolate the scene. From that point on, it’s the NTSB’s responsibility.” But with the crashes on 9/11, Grose says, “it’s my understanding that it did not occur exactly like that. They may have launched an NTSB crew, but it never took the same course a normal investigation would have.” [Lappe and Marshall, 2004, pp. 40-41] The NTSB says that, because the four crashes were “criminal acts,” the FBI is consequently the “lead investigative agency.” [National Transportation Safety Board, 9/13/2001] Therefore, the NTSB will later state that it “did not determine the probable cause” of any of the four crashes, “and does not plan to issue a report or open a public docket.” [National Transportation Safety Board, 3/7/2006; National Transportation Safety Board, 3/7/2006; National Transportation Safety Board, 3/7/2006; National Transportation Safety Board, 3/7/2006] However, even under these circumstances, Grose calls the lack of NTSB investigation “unacceptable.” He says, “Though the NTSB statute states the leadership of the investigation will defer to the FBI, the NTSB has still completed formal investigations into crashes deemed criminal acts.” It previously did so, for example, in the case of EgyptAir Flight 990, in which a pilot crashed a plane in an apparent suicide attempt (see October 31, 1999). [Lappe and Marshall, 2004, pp. 41] The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette complains about the unconventional investigative process, specifically in relation to Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. It says that, while the NTSB is “a small government agency whose procedures are fairly open,” with the FBI instead handling the investigation, “everything, even the most minute details, are being kept under strict lock and key.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/4/2001] As well as the lack of an NTSB investigation, attempts at conducting a precise grid search of the Flight 93 crash site will be overruled by the FBI (see September 16, 2001). [Longman, 2002, pp. 262]
After September 11, 2001: High-Ranking State Department Official Allegedly Arranges Release of Four 9/11 Suspects
An unnamed high-ranking official at the State Department arranges the release of four foreign operatives that have been taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the 9/11 attacks, according to FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds will later leave the FBI, becoming a whistleblower, and say she knows this based on telephone conversations she translated. Edmonds will say that the target of an FBI investigation into a nuclear smuggling ring calls the official, indicates names of people who have been taken into custody since 9/11, and says, “We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans.” The official says he will “take care of it,” and the four suspects on the list are released from interrogation and extradited. [Sunday Times (London), 1/6/2008] The names of the four suspects are not known, but one of the lead 9/11 hijackers, Marwan Alshehhi, and the sister of another, Mohamed Atta, will later be associated with the target of an FBI investigation connected to nuclear sciences, so this could possibly be a reference to this person (see July 1999). The high-ranking State Department official who is not named in the Sunday Times article is said to be Marc Grossman by both Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story and former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, writing in the American Conservative. [Raw Story, 1/20/2008; American Conservative, 1/28/2008]
September 12, 2001: Planned Terrorism Exercise May Have Sped up Response to 9/11 Attack
Before 9/11, New York City was scheduled to have a major terrorism training exercise on this day, in a large commercial warehouse on the Hudson River. Called Tripod, it was intended to test how well the city’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) could administer treatment in the event of a biological-terrorism attack. More than 1,000 Police Academy cadets and Fire Department trainees were recruited to act the parts of terrified civilians afflicted with a range of medical conditions. Various individuals were invited to watch, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the police and fire commissioners, and representatives of the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Presumably many have already arrived for the exercise when the 9/11 attacks occur (see 7:00 a.m. -9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001). Because Pier 92, where Tripod was due to take place, has been set up ready for the exercise, OEM staff are able to move there and quickly convert it into a large emergency operations center when their original command center (in WTC Building 7) is evacuated and later destroyed during 9/11. Thus, within 31 hours of the attacks, OEM has a functional facility able to manage the search and rescue effort, just four miles north-northwest of the WTC site. [New York Magazine, 10/15/2001; Jenkins and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 20 ; 9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004] Tripod is the follow-up to a previous training exercise in New York, called RED Ex (see May 11, 2001). [New York Sun, 12/20/2003] Due to the 9/11 attacks, Tripod is called off, but will eventually take place on May 22, 2002. [City of New York, 5/22/2002]
September 12, 2001: Virginia Chief Medical Examiner in ‘Tug of War’ Over Who Should do Autopsies of Pentagon Victims
Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Marcella Fierro, believing that state forensic pathologists have jurisdiction over the Pentagon’s land, reassigns staff from three other regional offices to the Northern Virginia office in order to conduct postmortem examinations on victims of the Pentagon attack. However, following what the Washington Post calls a “behind-the-scenes tug of war,” after FBI and Defense Department officials meet with her they instead opt to conduct forensic and mortuary activities at Defense Department facilities. Fierro requests and later receives a letter from Attorney General John Ashcroft relieving her department of its responsibilities. [Washington Post, 9/13/2001; US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A-47 ]
September 12, 2001: FAA New York Center Manager Forwards 9/11 Evidence to FBI, but Does Not Provide Tape of Controllers’ Accounts
A manager at the FAA’s New York Center begins forwarding evidence relating to the 9/11 attacks to the FBI, but he does not pass on, or reveal the existence of, a tape recording of some of the center’s air traffic controllers recalling their interactions with the hijacked aircraft. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ] Shortly after the attacks occurred, Kevin Delaney, the New York Center’s quality assurance manager, was instructed to make a tape recording of six controllers at the center who had been involved in handling or tracking two of the hijacked aircraft, giving their personal accounts of what happened (see 11:40 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 10/1/2003 ; Washington Post, 5/6/2004; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004 ]
Tape Not Provided to FBI – In response to verbal requests from the FBI, the FAA’s liaison to the bureau provides it with evidential material relating to the 9/11 attacks. Beginning on September 12, Delaney forwards evidence materials, as they become available, to the FBI through this liaison. But, although the tape of the controllers’ statements was logged into the New York Center’s record of evidence, neither Delaney nor Mike McCormick, the center’s manager, passes it to the FBI. Furthermore, neither of the two managers even discloses the existence of the tape to the FBI or the FAA liaison. Nor do they provide the center’s evidence log, which references the tape, to the FBI. Yet McCormick will later claim that one of his reasons for having requested the tape be made on September 11 was that he wanted a recording of the controllers’ statements that would be immediately available for law enforcement efforts. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004 ] He had also reassured the six controllers that the tape with their recorded statements on would be strictly for use only by law enforcement personnel (see (Shortly Before 11:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 10/1/2003 ]
Tape Could Have Been Provided on Following Day – By September 13, the FAA liaison will have provided the FBI with air traffic control voice and radar data, which the bureau is most interested in receiving, as well as several written statements that have already been obtained from controllers at the FAA’s Boston and Cleveland Centers, and from personnel at Washington’s Dulles Airport. Had McCormick or Delaney notified the liaison of the tape’s existence, he could have forwarded it to the FBI along with these statements. The tape will be deliberately destroyed several months later (see Between December 2001 and February 2002), and is never made available to the FBI for its investigation. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004 ]
September 11-27, 2001: FBI Leads Examination of Flight 93 Crash Scene; Supposedly Recovers 95 Percent of Plane
The first FBI agents arrive at the Flight 93 crash scene soon after it goes down. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 60] Due to the criminal nature of the crash, the FBI becomes lead authority for the investigation of the site. Attempts are made to have the area declared a federal disaster, but these are unsuccessful. [DMORT National News, 1/2002] For about two weeks, the FBI’s evidence recovery team of about 150 agents goes over the site with sifters, filtering evidence from the soil. It recovers about 510 pounds of human remains. [Longman, 2002, pp. 259; Age (Melbourne), 9/9/2002] Despite the lack of wreckage reported by those first at the crash scene (see (After 10:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001), the FBI claims that it recovers 95 percent of the plane. The largest piece found, it says, is a seven-foot-long piece of the fuselage skin, including four windows. With the exception of the two black boxes, all wreckage is passed on to United Airlines. Asked what United will do with this, a spokeswoman says, “I don’t think a decision has been made… but we’re not commenting.” [CNN, 9/24/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/25/2001] While conducting its investigation of the crash site, the FBI overrules a plan to carefully map the area and mark the positions of debris so as to determine exactly how Flight 93 crashed, claiming this would be too time-consuming (see September 16, 2001). [Longman, 2002, pp. 262] After it completes its work, the site becomes the responsibility of the county coroner, who continues the search for remains. [Longman, 2002, pp. 258-259]
September 12, 2001-2002: FBI Intimidates Witnesses Who Saw Atta in Venice; Tells Them to Keep Quiet
A number of witnesses who claim they saw Mohamed Atta living in Venice, Florida in early 2001 later allege that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, they are intimidated by the FBI and told to keep quiet about what they knew. Amanda Keller, who claims to have lived with Atta during early 2001 (see (February-April 2001)), later says that, even after she moved away from Venice, FBI agents called her every other day for several months after the attacks. She tells investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker about “intimidation by the FBI” that she suffered, adding, “They told me not to talk to anybody, to keep my mouth shut.” Stephanie Frederickson, who remembers Keller and Atta living next door to her in the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice, later recalls, “At first, right after the attack, [the FBI] told me I must have been mistaken in my identification. Or they would insinuate that I was lying. Finally they stopped trying to get me to change my story, and just stopped by once a week to make sure I hadn’t been talking to anyone. Who was I going to tell? Most everyone around here already knew.” Charles Grapentine, the manager of the Sandpiper Apartments, also confirms Atta having lived with Keller. He says that, after 9/11, the FBI “called me a liar, and told me to keep my mouth shut.” [Hopsicker, 2004, pp. 62-63, 65 and 88-89] According to the FBI’s account of events, Atta had left Venice by late December 2000 or early January 2001. Its account makes no mention of him returning there later. [US Congress, 9/26/2002] A former manager at Huffman Aviation, the Venice flight school attended by Atta in late 2000 (see July 6-December 19, 2000), also later alleges that the FBI intimidated him and told him to keep quiet. He says the FBI was “outside my house four hours after the attack.” He claims his phones were bugged after 9/11, and adds, “I thought these guys [Atta and his associates] were double agents. Why is that so incriminating?” [Hopsicker, 2004, pp. 149-150]
After September 11, 2001: FBI Launches Internal Investigation into Pre-9/11 Failings
The FBI launches an internal investigation into its failings before 9/11, but will not publicize the probe’s course or findings. The only thing known about the investigation is that two FBI agents who were detailed to Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, before 9/11 are interviewed by the investigators and give a different account of their conduct to the version they provide to the Justice Department’s inspector general. The two agents, Doug Miller and Mark Rossini, were involved in the blocking of a CIA cable to the FBI about 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar (see 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. January 5, 2000 and January 6, 2000) and falsely claimed to the inspector general that they could recall nothing about this (see (February 12, 2004)). However, they tell the internal investigation the truth, that they were ordered by Alec Station’s deputy chief, Tom Wilshire, and another CIA officer to withhold the cable from the FBI. [Congressional Quarterly, 10/1/2008]
