US intelligence obtains information that bin Laden and others are planning an attack in the US, possibly against specific landmarks in California and New York City. The reliability of the source is unknown. [US Congress, 9/18/2002]
September 1999: FBI Investigates Flight School Attendee Connected to Bin Laden
Agents from Oklahoma City FBI office visit the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma to investigate Ihab Ali Nawawi, who has been identified as bin Laden’s former personal pilot in a recent trial. The agents learned that Nawawi received his commercial pilot’s license at the school 1993, then traveled to another school in Oklahoma City to qualify for a rating to fly small business aircraft. He is later named as an unindicted coconspirator in the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Kenya. The trial witness who gave this information, Essam al Ridi, also attended flight school in the US, then bought a plane and flew it to Afghanistan for bin Laden to use (see Early 1993). [Boston Globe, 9/18/2001; CNN, 10/16/2001; Washington Post, 5/19/2002; US Congress, 10/17/2002] When Nawawi was arrested in May 1999, he was working as a taxi driver in Orlando, Florida (see May 18, 1999). Investigators discover recent ties between him and high-ranking al-Qaeda leaders, and suspect he was a “sleeper” agent. [St. Petersburg Times, 10/28/2001] However, the FBI agent visiting the school is not given most background details about him. [US Congress, 7/24/2003] It is not known if these investigators are aware of a terrorist flight school warning given by the Oklahoma City FBI office in 1998. Hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi later visit the Airman school in July 2000 but ultimately will decide to train in Florida instead. [Boston Globe, 9/18/2001] Al-Qaeda agent Zacarias Moussaoui will take flight lessons at Airman in February 2001 (see February 23-June 2001). One of the FBI agents sent to visit the school at this time visits it again in August 2001 asking about Moussaoui, but he will fail to make a connection between the two visits (see August 23, 2001).
September 1999: CIA Analyst Suggests US Use Muslims to Further US Interests in Central Asia
Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence, advocates using Muslim forces to further US interests in Central Asia. He states, “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against [the Russians]. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”
Later in 1999, investigative journalist Richard Labeviere suggests that Fuller is revealing actual US foreign policy in Central Asia and comments, “the convergence of strategic and economic interests between the American government and Sunni Islam is doing just fine….” [Labeviere, 1999, pp. 5-6]
September 1999: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Obtains US Store Membership Before Alleged Arrival in US
BJ’s Wholesale Club, a store in Hollywood, Florida, later tells the FBI that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta may have held a BJ’s membership card since at least this time (“more than two years” before 9/11). Several cashiers at the store vaguely remember seeing Atta there. [Miami Herald, 9/18/2001] According to the official story, Atta does not arrive in the US until June 3, 2000 (see June 3, 2000). [Miami Herald, 9/22/2001]
Between September 1999 and September 10, 2001: NORAD Exercises Simulate Plane Crashes into US Buildings; One of Them Is the World Trade Center
According to USA Today, “In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conduct[s] exercises simulating what the White House [later] says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.” One of the imagined targets is the World Trade Center. According to NORAD, these scenarios are regional drills, rather than regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises. They utilize “[n]umerous types of civilian and military aircraft” as mock hijacked aircraft, and test “track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination; and operational security and communications security procedures.” The main difference between these drills and the 9/11 attacks is that the planes in the drills are coming from another country, rather than from within the US. Before 9/11, NORAD reportedly conducts four major exercises at headquarters level per year. Most of them are said to include a hijack scenario (see Before September 11, 2001). [USA Today, 4/18/2004; CNN, 4/19/2004]
September 1999: US Report Predicts Spectacular Attack on Washington; Al-Qaeda Could ‘Crash-Land Aircraft’ into Buildings
A report prepared for US intelligence titled the “Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why” is completed. It states: “Al-Qaeda’s expected retaliation for the US cruise missile attack… could take several forms of terrorist attack in the nation’s capital. Al-Qaeda could detonate a Chechen-type building-buster bomb at a federal building. Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaeda’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and Semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House. Whatever form an attack may take, bin Laden will most likely retaliate in a spectacular way.” [Associated Press, 4/18/2002] The report discusses the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and includes a picture of the WTC towers. [Hudson, 1999, pp. 4 
; Los Angeles Times, 5/17/2002] It was prepared by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress, for the National Intelligence Council, which advises the president and US intelligence on emerging threats. Its author is Rex A. Hudson. [Associated Press, 4/18/2002; Hudson, 2005] The Bush administration will later claim to have never heard of this report until May 2002, despite the fact that it had been publicly posted on the Internet since 1999, and “widely shared within the government,” according to the New York Times. [CNN, 5/18/2002; New York Times, 5/18/2002]
September 1999: Anthrax Attack Exercise Is Scheduled to Be Held in New York, but Is Canceled
A major training exercise based around the scenario of a bioterrorist attack involving anthrax is scheduled to take place in New York this month, but is canceled due to an outbreak of West Nile virus in the city. [Koblentz, 9/2001, pp. 36 ; Levitt, 2013, pp. 5, 14-15] The US Department of Defense has, since 1997, been responsible for administering the Domestic Preparedness Program, which provides weapons of mass destruction (WMD) preparedness training for 120 American cities. The program includes an annual federal, state, and local exercise, which is intended to improve the integration and interaction of federal, state, and local assets in response to a threat or incident involving WMDs. This year’s exercise is scheduled to take place this month in New York. [US Congress. Senate, 4/20/1999; William S. Cohen, 2000, pp. 81 ] The large-scale live-action exercise, called “CitySafe,” is set to take place outdoors in a neighborhood in the Bronx and involve a simulated biological terrorist attack. Volunteers are going to act as victims who have been afflicted by airborne anthrax spores. The exercise, which would be federally funded, is going to cost $1 million, according to author Alexandra Levitt. It is set to involve a high level of participation by the US Army. It has even been rumored that President Clinton may attend. The exercise is “two weeks away” on August 28, according to Levitt. This would mean it is scheduled to take place around September 11. However, it is canceled by Jerome Hauer, the director of the mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, due to an outbreak of West Nile virus. [Koblentz, 4/2001, pp. 6-7 ; Levitt, 2013, pp. 5-6, 13, 15] The outbreak, which began in August this year, will result in 62 cases of acute encephalitis in the New York area, with seven people dying. [Psychiatric Times, 8/2003; New York Times, 9/16/2015] CitySafe is postponed indefinitely and apparently never held. [Koblentz, 9/2001, pp. 36 ]
Fall 1999: Radical London Cleric and Informer Calls on Followers to ‘Kill the Infidels’
Leading London-based radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, an informer for the British authorities (see Early 1997), calls on his followers to “kill the infidels” during a sermon delivered in Arabic in Finsbury Park mosque. He says: “When the forbidden months are past, it is a timed period, then fight and kill the infidels wherever you find them. He [Allah] did not say only here or here or here. Wherever you find them, except where it is forbidden like the Sacred Mosque. Wherever you find them, the kuffar is killed. Wherever you find them, take them and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem.” [O’Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 57-58]
Fall 1999: CIA Draws Up New Plan to Combat Al-Qaeda; Includes Disruption, Rendition and Capture Operations
The CIA drafts a new plan to combat al-Qaeda. The document, entitled “The Plan,” has several elements: 
Continue with the CIA’s rendition program, which had begun some time previously (see Summer 1995); Continue with disruption operations against al-Qaeda; Hire and train better officers with counterterrorism skills; Recruit more assets and try to penetrate al-Qaeda’s ranks; Close gaps in the collection of signals and imagery intelligence; Increase contacts with the Northern Alliance (see Summer 1999). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 142]
September 4, 1999: Bomb Targets Military Barracks in Dagestan, Next to Chechnya
A powerful bomb hits military housing for Russian soldiers in Buinaksk, Dagestan, killing 64. A car bomb is also discovered near a military hospital and defused. The attack is believed to have been committed by Chechen rebels in retaliation for Russian operations in Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan. [BBC, 9/5/1999; Associated Press, 9/5/1999; New York Times, 9/6/1999; Daily Telegraph, 9/6/1999]
