The National Commission on Terrorism releases its report warning the US against the growing threat of terrorism. The bipartisan commission, headed by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, was created by Congress in 1999. Bremer, a career diplomat, has long been involved in counterterrorism policy-making, and served as the ambassador at large for counterterrorism during the Reagan administration. The report starts with a quote from Thomas C. Schelling’s foreword to Roberta Wohlstetter’s book, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, explaining why governments are often ill-prepared for surprise attacks. It says the US faces a more lethal and unpredictable enemy: “Today’s terrorists seek to inflict mass casualties, and they are attempting to do so both overseas and on American soil. They are less dependent on state sponsorship and are, instead, forming loose, transnational affiliations based on religious or ideological affinity and a common hatred of the United States.” The report warns that while the number of terrorist incidents has gone down, the number of casualties per attack has increased. Moreover, religiously motivated groups, such as Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, present a new challenge for intelligence agencies. They are less hierarchical, have a variety of sources of funding and support, and are therefore “more difficult to predict, track, and penetrate.” In response, the US must pursue an aggressive policy to gather intelligence on terrorist groups, sanction countries sponsoring terrorists, and prepare for a catastrophic terrorist attack on the homeland, possibly one involving weapons of mass destruction. The report also calls for monitoring the immigration status of foreign students. [National Commisson on Terrorism, 6/2000; New York Times, 6/4/2000; NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 6/6/2000; New York Times, 9/12/2001]
June 2000: GAO Warns of ‘Large-Scale Incidents Designed for Maximum Destruction’
The General Accounting Office (GAO) issues a report examining problems affecting the performance of security screening staff at US airports. It warns: “The threat of attacks on aircraft by terrorists or others remains a persistent and growing concern for the United States. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the trend in terrorism against US targets is toward large-scale incidents designed for maximum destruction, terror, and media impact.” Though the GAO describes the performance of screeners in detecting dangerous objects like handguns as “unsatisfactory,” it makes no recommendations to revise current screening practices. [General Accounting Office, 6/2000, pp. 6-8, 20 
; Boston Globe, 9/20/2001]
June 2000: CIA Director Tenet Visits Pakistan, Complains about Islamic Charities’ Ties to Bin Laden
CIA Director George Tenet makes a secret trip to Pakistan to complain about funds being moved through Islamic charities to al-Qaeda. This is part of an effort coordinated by the National Security Council to cut off the vast sums of money that intelligence officials believe flow to bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network through Islamic charities and wealthy donors from across the Middle East. The US campaign prompts the Pakistani government in early 2001 to make some efforts to ban raising funds explicitly designated for holy war. Former US officials will later claim the trip is part of a larger effort to disrupt bin Laden’s financial network following the 1998 US embassy bombings. [Wall Street Journal, 10/1/2001]
Summer 2000: Bioterrorism Exercise Is Held in New York; Participants Consider How to Shut Down Manhattan
A training exercise is held in New York based around the scenario of a biological warfare agent being released, presumably by terrorists, at a sporting event. During the tabletop exercise, which is attended by top city officials, the police commissioner decides he wants to shut down Manhattan in response to the simulated crisis. Although other exercise participants are skeptical about his decision, they discuss how the shutdown could be achieved. Their discussion leads to an informal understanding between them of how authorities could stop traffic on the city’s bridges and through the city’s tunnels if it was ever necessary to do so. The plan they come up with is that, initially, all traffic would be one-way out of the city and then, subsequently, routes would be closed. This plan will actually be implemented on September 11, 2001, in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center that day. [Jenkins and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 29 ] Today’s exercise is presumably conducted by Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management, which was created in 1996 with the purpose of, among other things, improving New York’s response to major incidents, including terrorist attacks (see 1996). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 283]
Summer-October 2000: Al-Qaeda Counterterrorism Squad Found to be Illegally Sharing Information with Prosecutors
The Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), which helps obtain warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), discovers errors in several al-Qaeda related FISA applications under a counterterrorist program called “Catcher’s Mitt.” The OIPR verbally notifies the FISA Court of the errors, which are mostly in affidavits submitted by supervisory special agents at field offices. Then, in September and October 2000, the OIPR submits two pleadings to the court regarding approximately 75-100 applications with errors starting in July 1997. Many of the errors concern misleading statements about the nature of collaboration between criminal and intelligence agents. Most of these applications stated that the FBI New York field office, where the I-49 squad focusing on al-Qaeda was based (see January 1996 and Late 1998-Early 2002), had separate teams of agents handling criminal and intelligence investigations. But in actual fact the I-49 agents intermingled with criminal agents working on intelligence cases and intelligence agents working on criminal cases. Therefore, contrary to what the FISA Court has been told, agents working on a criminal investigation have had unrestricted access to information from a parallel intelligence investigation—a violation of the so-called “wall,” the set of bureaucratic procedures designed to separate criminal and intelligence investigations (see July 19, 1995). [Newsweek, 5/27/2002; Newsweek, 3/29/2004; US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 36-37 ] The information about al-Qaeda in these cases is also shared with assistant US attorneys without FISA permission being sought or granted first. Other errors include the FBI director wrongly asserting that the target of a FISA application was not under criminal investigation, omissions of material facts about a prior relationship between the FBI and a target, and an interview of a target by an assistant US attorney. [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, 5/17/2002] This leads the FISA Court to impose new requirements regarding the “wall” (see October 2000). Similar problems will be found in FISA applications for surveillance of Hamas operatives (see March 2001).
Summer 2000: Turkish Agent Allegedly Requests $250,000 for Nuclear Information Stolen from Air Force Base
A covert recording made by the FBI indicates that a Turkish agent is trying to sell nuclear information that he stole from an air force base in Alabama, according to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds will later say that he meets two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell the information. When she listens to the recording, she hears the agent saying, “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.” The agent is connected to a ring fronted by Turkish and Israeli elements that arranges the illicit transfer of nuclear information and technology to Pakistan via Turkey (see Mid-Late 1990s and (1997-2002)). [Sunday Times (London), 1/6/2008]
June 2-3, 2000: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Stops by Prague on Way to New York
9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta arrives in the early morning in Prague, Czech Republic, by bus from Cologne, Germany. He plays on slot machines at the Happy Day Casino, then disappears. It will never be discovered where he sleeps in Prague. He takes the midday flight to New York the next day (see June 3, 2000). [Czech Radio, 9/3/2004] After 9/11, this trip will fuel the controversy over whether Atta meets an Iraqi agent in Prague in 2001 (see April 8, 2001 and September 18, 2001-April 2007). It is not entirely clear why Atta chooses to fly to the US from the Czech Republic, although 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will be reported to have lived in Prague in the late 1990s (see Mid-1996-September 11, 2001).
June 3, 2000: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Supposedly Arrives in US for First Time, Despite Evidence of Prior Entries
9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta supposedly arrives in the US for the first time, flying from Prague to Newark on a tourist visa issued May 18 in Berlin. [Miami Herald, 9/22/2001; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 11/12/2001] Official investigations will late assume that this is the first time Atta was in the US. However, there are reports that he was in the US before this (see September 1999, April 2000, and Late April-Mid-May 2000).
June 2000: 9/11 Hijackers Atta and Alshehhi Stay in New York Area, but Some Accounts Suggest Elsewhere
After arriving in the US on May 29 and June 3, 2000, 9/11 hijackers Marwan Alshehhi and Mohamed Atta meet up and reportedly spend all of June in the New York area. The 9/11 Commission later reports them spending the month staying in a series of short-term rentals in New York City while searching for a flight school to attend, e-mailing a New Hampshire school on June 5 and inquiring with a New Jersey school on June 22. A day after arriving in the US, Atta receives a mobile phone he bought listing his address as an Oklahoma flight school he subsequently visits (see July 2-3, 2000). According to the FBI, Alshehhi enrolls at an English language school, and the pair remains in the area until July 2. [US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 519] However, some accounts suggest they leave before this. According to the owner of the Venice, Florida flight school subsequently attended by Atta and Alshehhi, the pair first visits his school on July 1. [US Congress, 3/19/2002] And according to the later statement of a local sheriff, some of the hijackers, including Atta, may live and take flight training in Punta Gorda, Florida, prior to moving to Venice (see Before July 2000). After 9/11, a federal investigator will reveal that Atta and Alshehhi rented rooms in the Bronx and Brooklyn in spring 2000. Whether this included the period prior to when Atta officially first entered the US, in June, is unstated (see Spring 2000). [Associated Press, 12/8/2001]
June 4, 2000-September 11, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Uses Pay Phones for All Overseas Calls and Cell Phone for Some US Calls
While in the US, future 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta generally makes phone calls using pay phones with a variety of prepaid calling cards. One day after arriving in New York City on June 3, 2000 (see June 3, 2000), Atta buys a cell phone and calling card at a store in Manhattan. Later in the month, he uses the phone to make more than a dozen calls to al-Qaeda facilitator Ali Abdul Aziz Ali in the Middle East (see June 28-30, 2000). But after about a month, he stops using that phone, and uses pay phones and more difficult to trace prepaid calling cards for his overseas calls. For instance, from February 10 to 12, 2001, he makes a series of calls to his relatives in Egypt (mother, father, sister, and grandfather) from a pay phone in Georgia. At the same time, he generally uses a cell phone to make calls within the US. For instance, he leases a cell phone from January 2001 to the end of May 2001, and he uses others. Other hijackers, like Marwan Alshehhi and Hani Hanjour, also have their own cell phones for calls inside the US. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 69 ; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 119, 124, 147 ; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001 ] But the hijackers use pay phones with prepaid calling cards often. Investigators will later determine that the hijackers used at least 133 different prepaid calling cards, making them hard to track. [Bamford, 2008, pp. 53]
