The FBI warns that al-Qaeda operatives are planning several holiday attacks on US shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago over the holiday period. [ABC News, 11/8/2007] In an intelligence report distributed to law enforcement authorities, the FBI says that the attacks have been planned for two years with the goal of disrupting the US economy. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 11/7/2007 
] The FBI received the information in late September and declassified it for the intelligence information reports. These reports routinely contain raw, unvetted or uncorroborated chatter about possible threats. It is estimated that the FBI released 8,000 such reports over the last year. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security Department have released about 200 threat bulletins possible plot trends that are based on actual events worldwide. [SF Gate, 11/8/2007] Questions are immediately raised about the alert. [ABC News, 11/8/2007] As with previous threats, some in the media question the timing and necessity of such a warning. The FBI anticipates this and clarifies its intentions in releasing the memo. The report states that “this information was obtained through a lengthy chain of acquisition, and was provided to the source by a sub-source who spoke in confidence. The veracity of the information is uncertain but the threat is being reported due to the nature of the information.” [ABC News, 11/8/2007] Other intelligence officers raise the possibility that it could be “disinformation.” It is believed that the source only has “indirect access” to al-Qaeda. It is common for jihadist web sites and chat rooms to have comments discussing attacks on “soft targets,” such as shopping malls. Special Agent Richard Kolko says “out of abundance of caution, and for any number of other reasons, raw intelligence is regularly shared within the intelligence and law enforcement communities – even when the value of the information is unknown… Al-Qaeda messaging has clearly stated they intend to attack the US or its interests; however, there is no information to state this is a credible threat. As always, we remind people to remain vigilant and report suspicious activity to authorities.” A Homeland Security official says “we have no credible, specific information suggesting an imminent attack.” [ABC News, 11/8/2007] LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa urges residents to go about their daily routines, but says that they should be “mindful of anything out of the ordinary.” [SF Gate, 11/8/2007]
November 10, 2007: ’Suitcase Nukes’ Unlikely to Exist, Says FBI Official
“Suitcase nukes”—nuclear weapons that can fit inside a suitcase or duffel bag and be planted in buildings or football stadiums with relative ease—may be a staple of Hollywood movies, television shows such as Fox’s 24, and thriller novels, but in reality do not exist, says Vahid Majidi, the assistant director of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. Nevertheless, the idea is so prevalent in the American conscious that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has issued warnings about “threats” from such devices, warnings repeated on the White House’s Web site (see May 2006). Officials such as Majidi say that any such device would be highly complex to produce, require significant upkeep and cost a small fortune. Majidi and other counterproliferation officials do not believe such a threat remains today. “The suitcase nuke is an exciting topic that really lends itself to movies,” Majidi says, but “No one has been able to truly identify the existence of these devices.” The real threat, say Majidi and other officials, is from less deadly and sophisticated devices assembled from stolen or black-market nuclear material. But governmental sources have played up the threat. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) once said in a hearing, “Perhaps the most likely threat is from a suitcase nuclear weapon in a rusty car on a dock in New York City.” And former representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) was known for carrying around a mock-up of a suitcase nuke made out of a briefcase, foil, and a pipe.
Origin of story – The story took hold in the public mind in the 1960s, based on information from Soviet defectors. The information leaked to the media, but no US officials ever actually saw such a Soviet-made suitcase device. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the US constructed a “backpack nuke,” called a Special Atomic Demolition Munition, to be used by two-man teams to destroy dams, tunnels, or bridges. These devices now only exist in museums. In 1997, retired general Alexander Lebed, the former national security chief of Russia, told reporters that Chechen rebels had portable nuclear devices. However, his story changed radically over time and Russian government officials said it was inaccurate, and he may have been misled by training mock-ups. Russian defector and former intelligence officer Stanislav Lunev wrote in 1998 that Russian agents had suitcase nukes inside the US in preparation for some future conflict. He testified before Congress, but never gave any specific information about such devices.
Technical problems – Colonel-General Viktor Yesin, former head of the Russian strategic rocket troops, said in 2004 that such suitcase nukes would be too expensive for most countries to produce and would not last more than several months because the nuclear core would decompose quickly. Laura Holgate of the Nuclear Threat Initiative says the biggest threat is from a terrorist cell that uses stolen nuclear material to improvise a device. Such a device would be, at its smallest, “[l]ike SUV-sized. Way bigger than a suitcase.” [Associated Press, 11/10/2007]
December 18, 2007: Washington Post Disputes CIA Claim that Torture of Zubaida Was Effective
The CIA videotapes destruction scandal reopens a debate about the usefulness of torturing al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida. The FBI briefly used rapport-building techniques on Zubaida before the CIA took over and tortured him. On December 10, 2007, several days after the public disclosure that the videotapes of the CIA’s interrogation of Zubaida were destroyed, former CIA officer John Kiriakou admitted that Zubaida was tortured by the use of waterboarding (see December 10, 2007). Kiriakou claimed that waterboarding was so effective that Zubaida completely broke after just one session of waterboarding lasting 35 seconds. [ABC News, 12/10/2007] This claim became a frequently used media talking point. However, on December 18, the Washington Post presents a contrary account, stating, “There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies, that Abu Zubaida provided some valuable intelligence before CIA interrogators began to rough him up, including information that helped identify Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla” (see Late March through Early June, 2002). The Post notes that Kiriakou helped capture Zubaida but was not present at any of his interrogations. Furthermore, “other former and current officials” disagree with Kiriakou’s claim “that Abu Zubaida’s cooperation came quickly under harsh interrogation or that it was the result of a single waterboarding session. Instead, these officials said, harsh tactics used on him at a secret detention facility in Thailand went on for weeks or, depending on the account, even months.” [Washington Post, 12/18/2007] The most in-depth previous media accounts suggesed that the FBI interrogation of Zubaida was getting good intelligence while the CIA torture of him resulted in very dubious intelligence (see Mid-April-May 2002 and June 2002).
January 6, 2008 and After: Sunday Times Runs Series of Sibel Edmonds Stories
The Sunday Times runs a series of articles about FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, detailing allegations made by Edmonds about Turkish and US involvement in the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring, as well as money laundering, drugs, and conventional weapons. Some allegations made by Edmonds were previously discussed in the press, but many remained secret; she divulges more to Sunday Times now because, after having unsuccessfully attempted to pursue her case through the courts and Congress, she has become “disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act.”
Allegations against State Department and Pentagon Officials – The allegations center on an unnamed former high-ranking State Department official, who is said to have received money from Turkish nuclear smugglers, and on other household names who served at the Pentagon. Edmonds says, “He [the State Department official] was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.” She adds, “If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials.” The former State Department official says: “If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money, that’s outrageous… I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this.”
“Overlapping Corroboration” – The Sunday Times says that it spoke to two FBI agents and two CIA officers who worked on nuclear proliferation while researching the story, and, “While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.” One of the CIA sources confirms that Turkey did acquire nuclear secrets from the US and shared them with Pakistan and Israel, saying: “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s.” [Sunday Times (London), 1/6/2008; Sunday Times (London), 1/20/2008; Sunday Times (London), 1/27/2008]
Official Said to be Marc Grossman – The high-ranking State Department official who is not named in the Sunday Times articles, possibly due to libel law considerations, is said to be Marc Grossman by both Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story and former CIA officer Phillip Giraldi, writing in the American Conservative. [Raw Story, 1/20/2008; American Conservative, 1/28/2008]
January 16, 2008: Director of National Intelligence Falsely Claims US Intelligence Was Not Allowed to Track 9/11 Hijackers in US
Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell says that the 9/11 hijackers could not be monitored in the US because they did not commit any crimes. He says in a speech: “[I]f Mohamed Atta had been in Pakistan and we were tracking him, some way to track him—he went to Turkey, went to Europe, got over to Canada, we’d track him as foreign intelligence target, and he crosses into the United States, he’s now a US person; he gets all of the rights and privileges that you get. He’s invisible to your intelligence community. As long as he doesn’t break the law, law enforcement can’t conduct surveillance because they don’t have a probable cause. Al-Qaeda recognized that and that is why 9/11 happened in my view.” [Director of National Intelligence, 1/17/2008 ] The 9/11 hijackers committed various offenses for which they could have been arrested in the US, such as lying on visa application forms (see August 29, 2001), overstaying their visas (see January 18, 2001, May 20, 2001 and January 10, 2001), driving without a license (note: a warrant for Mohamed Atta’s arrest was even issued in the summer of 2001—see June 4, 2001), and having a known role in blowing up the USS Cole, thereby murdering 17 US servicemen (see Around October 12, 2000). The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was also specifically designed so that the FBI and other agencies could monitor agents of foreign powers in the US even if they did not commit a crime (see 1978).
Before January 20, 2008: Anonymous Letter Makes Allegations about State Department Official over Nuclear Smuggling
A human rights organization called the Liberty Coalition receives an anonymous letter regarding the involvement of high-ranking US officials in an FBI-monitored nuclear smuggling ring linked to Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan. The letter makes a number of allegations about the ring, some of which corroborate similar allegations previously made by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. For example, the letter names a high-ranking State Department official, who it says was recorded speaking to a counterpart at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001. During this time the official passed on a warning that the smuggling ring should not deal with Brewster Jennings & Associates, as it was a CIA front (see Summer-Autumn 2001). The letter also says that Turkish FBI surveillance targets talked to agents of Pakistan’s ISI based at the Pakistani embassy in Washington, and that “operatives” at the American-Turkish Council (ATC) were also monitored. The tip-off instructs the Coalition to submit a Freedom of Information Request for the specific file number, but the FBI will say that the file does not exist (see January 20, 2008). [Sunday Times (London), 1/20/2008] The high-ranking State Department official who is not named in the Sunday Times 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]
January 20, 2008: FBI Denies Existence of Alleged Nuclear Smuggling File
The FBI is accused of covering up a key case file containing evidence against corrupt government officials involved in a nuclear smuggling ring. The case file’s number is allegedly 203A-WF-210023, but the FBI denies it exists in response to a Freedom of Information Act request specifically for a file with that number. The request was made by the Liberty Coalition, a human rights group, based on an anonymous tip-off (see Before January 20, 2008). However, the Sunday Times obtains a document signed by an FBI official saying that the case file does exist. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds also says that the file exists, that she previously discussed its contents with Congressional committees, and that the denial by the FBI is an “outright lie.” According to Edmonds, the file “refers to the counterintelligence program that the [Justice Department] has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations.” An FBI spokesman contacted by the Sunday Times is not familiar with the case file but comments, “if the FBI says it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist.” [Sunday Times (London), 1/20/2008]
January 22, 2008: British Journalist Notes US Media Ignoring Sibel Edmonds Scoop
Roy Greenslade, a media commentator with The Guardian, wonders why the US media is ignoring revelations by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, who says that there are links between US officials and the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring (see January 6, 2008 and After). Greenslade also quotes former Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg: “For the second time in two weeks, the entire US press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch’s London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt US officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the US Congress and the courts.” Greenslade calls it a “very hot story” and “world exclusive,” and says it “should surely have been taken up by mainstream newspapers in the United States.” [Guardian, 1/22/2008] One of the few US media outlets that picks up the story initially is Fox News, which reports on one of the claims made in the Sunday Times—that the FBI has denied it has a file on the nuclear smuggling case in response to a Freedom of Information Act, whereas Edmonds says it does have the file, as does a document signed by an FBI official that has been obtained by the Sunday Times (see January 20, 2008). [Fox News, 1/20/2008] The Dallas Morning News will also reprint a section of an article about Edmonds in February. The article was originally written for the American Conservative Magazine by former CIA officer Philip Giraldi. [Dallas Morning News, 2/17/2008]
February 2008: Considerable Video Footage of 9/11 Hijackers Remains Unreleased
An FBI timeline of the 9/11 hijackers’ activities compiled in late 2001 and released this month indicates that considerable video footage of the hijackers has yet to be released. Most of the footage appears to come from surveillance video discovered after the 9/11 attacks. So far, the only known footage made public has been two video stills of Hani Hanjour and Majed Moqed using an ATM machine, one still each of Waleed Alshehri and Satam Al Suqami, several stills of Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari in Portland the night before 9/11 (see September 10, 2001), and a few more stills and footage of several hijackers in airports on the morning of 9/11 (see (Between 5:45 a.m. and 5:53 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and 7:18 a.m. September 11, 2001). But the FBI’s timeline reveals video footage that has never even been publicly hinted at: 
Mohamed Atta used an ATM in Palm Beach, Florida, on July 19, 2001. Salem Alhazmi and Ahmed Alghamdi used an ATM in Alexandria, Virginia, on August 2. Hanjour and Mojed used a Kinko’s for half an hour in College Park, Maryland, on August 10. Moqed and Nawaf Alhazmi shopped at an Exxon gas station in Joppa, Maryland, on August 28. Waleed and Wail Alshehri wandered around a Target store in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on September 4. Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari were in a Florida bank lobby on September 4, and the audio of Atta calling Saudi Arabia was even recorded in the process. Fayez Ahmed Banihammad used an ATM on September 7 in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Salem Alhazmi was at the Falls Church DMV on September 7. Low quality surveillance video at the Milner Hotel in Boston showed Marwan Alshehhi and possibly Mohand Alshehri on multiple occasions in the days just before 9/11. Ziad Jarrah and possibly Saeed Alghamdi were videotaped using a Kinko’s for about an hour near Newark on September 10. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001 ] Additionally, an FBI document will later be made public that indicates there is footage of Saeed Alghamdi entering the Marriott Hotel at the Newark International Airport on September 8, carrying a black roll along bag (he will not have any checked luggage on 9/11). This same document indicates Ziad Jarrah is also seen on videotape shortly after midnight on September 8 at the same Marriott Hotel, making credit card and cash payments for two hotel rooms. He is accompanied by two young men, who most likely are Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alnami. [Investigative Services Division, FBI Headquarters, 4/19/2002]
September 21, 2008: Remains of 13 Hijackers Still in US Custody
The New York Times reports that the FBI and the New York City medical examiner’s office have identified the remains of 13 of the 9/11 hijackers. The remains are still in their custody because no one has claimed them (see Summer 2002). The FBI holds the remains of the nine hijackers who took over Flight 77 and Flight 93, which were recovered from the Pentagon and Shanksville crash sites. The identity of the remains was established indirectly. First, investigators identified the victims using DNA profiles provided by relatives. Those remains that could not be matched to any profile were assumed to belong to the hijackers. The New York City medical examiner’s office also has the remains of four hijackers recovered from the World Trade Center site. A DNA profile for each of the 10 hijackers who took part in the New York attacks was established by the FBI from recovered personal items, such as luggage and cigarette butts left in a rental car. The FBI then supplied these profiles to the medical examiner’s office but without naming them. Therefore, the examiner’s office could only match the four recovered sets of remains but could not identify them by name. Both the FBI and the medical examiner’s office refuse to disclose where exactly the remains are being kept. [New York Times, 9/21/2008; Newsweek, 1/12/2009]
