The US State Department’s 2000 annual report states in its section on state-sponsored terrorism that the Iraqi government’s “terrorist” activities consist primarily of its use of violence to silence dissident exiles. The report also notes that Iraq has not supported any militant operations against the West “since its failed plot to assassinate former President Bush in 1993 in Kuwait.” Significantly the report does not tie Iraq to international Islamic militant groups like al-Qaeda. [US Department of State, 4/30/2001; US Department of State, 4/30/2001; Newsday, 12/24/2001]
May 2001: Medics Train for Airplane Hitting Pentagon
The Army’s DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic (DTHC) and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic, both housed within the Pentagon, hold a tabletop exercise along with Arlington County Emergency Medical Services. The scenario practiced for is of an airplane crashing into the Pentagon’s west side—the same side as is impacted in the attack on 9/11. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. B17 
; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 23 and 107] Reportedly, the purpose of the exercise is “to fine-tune their emergency preparedness.” [US Medicine, 10/2001] According to US Medicine newspaper, the plane in the scenario is a hijacked Boeing 757. [US Medicine, 1/2002] (Flight 77, that targets the Pentagon on 9/11, is a 757. [New York Times, 9/13/2001] ) But a federally funded report on the response to the Pentagon attack says it is a commuter airplane. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. B17 ] The Defense Department’s own book about the Pentagon attack says the plane in this exercise is a twin-engine aircraft (757s, like Flight 77, are twin-engine aircraft), but that it crashes into the Pentagon by accident in the scenario. [New York Times, 9/13/2001; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 107] The idea of a plane hitting the Pentagon was suggested by Colonel John Baxter, the commander of the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic, who has often been reminded that the Pentagon is on the flight path of nearby Reagan National Airport. The scenario was approved by Air Force Surgeon General Paul Carlton Jr. [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 107 and 109] Baxter and Col. James Geiling, the commander of the DTHC, later say this exercise prepares them well to respond to the Pentagon attack on 9/11. For example, the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic retools its trauma packs as a result. [US Medicine, 10/2001] And, due to the exercise, staffers of both clinics will wear special blue vests on 9/11 labeled “physician,” “nurse,” or “EMT,” to allow for easy identification. [Uniformed Services University, 1/2002 ] Paul Carlton will say, “We learned a lot from that exercise and applied those lessons to September 11.” [Murphy, 2002, pp. 222] And Major Lorie Brown, the chief nurse of the DTHC, who leads the exercise, will later recall, “The training made a huge difference” on 9/11. [Nursing Spectrum, 9/24/2001] The two Pentagon clinics routinely hold mass casualty tabletop exercises. The scenario changes for each drill. [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 107]
May 2001: TV Drama Series Writer Considers Storyline about Bin Laden Organizing Hijacking of Three US Planes
Michael Frost Beckner, the creator of a forthcoming CBS drama series about the CIA, writes a 9/11-like storyline for an episode of his show in which Osama bin Laden has three American aircraft hijacked. [Variety, 11/20/2001] The series, which is scheduled to begin airing in late September, is called The Agency and will show the CIA tackling problems of national security, taking on villains such as Arab terrorists and Colombian drug dealers. [Guardian, 9/6/2001; Guardian, 10/5/2001; CNN, 10/31/2001] Beckner will later tell Variety magazine that, this month, he writes an episode of The Agency “in which bin Laden had three US planes hijacked.” He will apparently provide no further details of the storyline. Variety will report, “Needless to say, the script was never completed.” [Variety, 11/20/2001] Beckner will also reveal that a number of the storylines for the first series of The Agency were suggested to him by Chase Brandon, the CIA’s entertainment liaison officer. [Jenkins, 2012, pp. 65-66] Whether the storyline about bin Laden organizing plane hijackings was suggested by Brandon is unknown. Furthermore, Beckner will say that he has “done a lot of back and forth with the CIA” in his career as a writer, and explain that the agency “would let in anyone, including a little writer like me, to hear that al-Qaeda and bin Laden are going to attack us.” [Hollywood, Health and Society, 4/2/2002 ] The CIA is in fact cooperating extensively with the producers of The Agency, such as by vetting scripts and allowing filming at CIA headquarters. [New York Times, 8/26/2001] The pilot episode of the show, which Beckner writes, will feature a storyline in which bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist group plots to blow up a department store in London (see September 27, 2001). [New York Times, 9/29/2001; Hollywood, Health and Society, 4/2/2002 ] And another episode, also written by Beckner, will be based around a planned terrorist attack in the US using anthrax (see October 18, 2001). [Variety, 10/16/2001; Jenkins, 2012, pp. 66]
May 2001: US and Jordan Let Suspected Al-Qaeda Figure Go Free
Khalil Deek, member of an al-Qaeda cell in Anaheim, California, is mysteriously released in Jordan and allowed to go free. Deek had been arrested on suspicions that he masterminded a series of planned millennium attacks in Jordan (see December 11, 1999). Investigators believe he may have masterminded an attempted bombing of the Los Angeles airport as well (see December 15-31, 1999), and in fact US intelligence had been interested in him since the late 1980s (see Late 1980s, December 14-25, 1999, and May 2000). But despite is the seemingly strong evidence against him, he is released this month after mounting a hunger strike. Relatives tell a US newspaper that US government officials pressured Jordan to let him go. [Orange County Register, 9/12/2005] Despite the fact that US officials had previously labeled him a terrorist mastermind, they do not protest his release. [Orange County Weekly, 6/15/2006] The Jordanian government claims they lacked evidence Deek was aware of terrorist activities. [Orange County Weekly, 6/17/2004] The Los Angeles Times reports that he had cooperated with US investigators in deciphering al-Qaeda computer documents. [Los Angeles Times, 3/29/2000] He is deported to the United Arab Emirates. He is rearrested there and held for several days, and then let go again. [Orange County Weekly, 5/31/2001] A few days later, Deek emerges at the US embassy in Pakistan with his wife and family. He approaches the embassy gates, asking staffers there help to bring his family back to the US. However, he is only able to speak to someone through an intercom and is not allowed in the building. He is told to come back in two weeks. A newspaper will later comment, “Given that the US government already considered him a dangerous man, it’s not surprising that embassy officials weren’t eager to provide him with travel visas. But it is weird that they didn’t let him inside the building and simply arrest him.” [Orange County Weekly, 6/15/2006] It will later be alleged that Deek was actually a mole for the Jordanian government (see Shortly After December 11, 1999).
May 2001: Feith, Perle, and Wolfowitz Discuss Iraq Invasion; Scowcroft Initially Favorable
According to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, “Four months before 9/11”, FBI monitoring overhears Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz “discussing with the Turkish ambassador in Washington an arrangement whereby the US would invade Iraq and divide the country.… They were negotiating what Turkey required in exchange for allowing an attack from Turkish soil.” National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, later a critic of the Iraq War, is initially in favor of the plan, but will later drop his support when it becomes clear Turkish demands for control of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq will not be granted. [The American Conservative, 11/1/2009]
May 2001: Clinton Impeachment Lawyer Learns About Al-Qaeda Manhattan Attack Warning
David Schippers, the House Judiciary Committee’s chief investigator in the Clinton impeachment trial, was hired to represent FBI agent Robert Wright in September 1999 (see August 3, 1999). After 9/11, Schippers will claim that he began privately informing congresspeople about Wright’s investigation into terrorism financing in the US in early 2001, but found little interest (see February-March 2001). Schippers appears to have had different sources than Wright who began telling him about attack warnings. Supposedly, the first warning was based on a secret February 1995 report which stated that bin Laden was planning three attacks on the US: the bombing of a federal building in the heartland of the US, shooting down or blowing up an airplane, and a massive attack in lower Manhattan. Schippers believes the first warning was a prediction of the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. – 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) and the second was a prediction of the 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800 (see July 17, 1996-September 1996). In some versions of this warning, the Manhattan attack was meant to be caused by a “dirty bomb” – explosives mixed with radioactive materials – but other accounts described the use of planes as weapons instead. He says one of his sources for this early warning was Yossef Bodansky, director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. Schippers will claim that his sources continued to uncover further information. The Manhattan warning “had started out just a general threat, but they narrowed it and narrowed it, more and more with time,” until the “same people who came out with the first warning” tell him in May 2001 that “an attack on lower Manhattan is imminent.” Schippers speaks to several FBI agents directly, and hears that “there are [other agents] all over the country who are frustrated and just waiting to come out.” They are frustrated by “a bureaucratic elite in Washington short-stopping information,” which gives “terrorism a free reign in the United States.” Schippers later claims that some FBI agents later told him that before 9/11, “they had [Mohamed] Atta in their sights.” They also had attempted to “check out” the names and activities of “very strange characters training at flight schools.” He will claim that “FBI agents in Chicago and Minnesota” tell him “there [is] going to be an attack on lower Manhattan.” Schippers will later claim that he will attempt to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft and other politicians about this warning in coming months, but that they will show little interest (see July-Late August 2001). [WorldNetDaily, 10/21/2001; Indianapolis Star, 5/18/2002; Ahmed, 2004, pp. 258-260]
May 2001: NSA Analyst Warns of Terrorist Planes into Buildings Plot; But Described as ‘Obsessed’ By Superiors
A National Security (NSA) linguist who only allows himself to be identified to the media as “J” warns his superiors at the agency that terrorists may be planning to hijack passenger planes to ram into buildings, and that security measures need to be implemented to prevent this. Instead, J is ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation. (J was given similar treatment in another instance eight years before; see September 11, 1993). J will later claim that NSA officials dismissed his warnings, and instead labeled him as “obsessed” with the idea of a “kamikaze” threat because of time he had spent in Japan. In 2006, J will say that any time his analysis countered conventional wisdom, he was ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluations. He will eventually develop an irregular heartbeat due to the stress of anticipating further retaliatory, potentially career-damaging psychological evaluations. “I believe it was retaliation, but how do you prove that?” he will ask. J will spend his last decade at NSA with no promotion or raise, and will say that another linguist left the agency during that time out of disgust with what was happening. “Who was going to listen to us? Who could do anything anyway?” he asks in 2006. In 2006, other current and former NSA officials will claim that the NSA routinely uses unfavorable psychological evaluations to retaliate against whistleblowers and those employees who come into conflict with superiors (see January 25-26, 2006). [Cybercast News Service, 1/26/2006] It is not clear whether J’s warnings are related to the 33 other warnings picked up by NSA analysts during this same time period (see May-July 2001.)
May 2001: CIA Director Tenet Secretly Visits Pakistan, but ISI Director Refuses to Share Information about Bin Laden
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a former covert operative and Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour while CIA Director Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with President Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani intelligence connections (as well as a role in the Iran-Contra affair). While in Pakistan, Tenet, in what was described as “an unusually long meeting,” also secretly meets with his Pakistani counterpart, ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed. [SAPRA (New Delhi), 5/22/2001] According to a senior ISI officer in 2006, Tenet urges Mahmood to trade information on Osama bin Laden. However, Mahmood does not cooperate. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 309, 520]
May 2001: Report Warns of Al-Qaeda Infiltration from Canada
US intelligence obtains information that al-Qaeda is planning to infiltrate the US from Canada and carry out an operation using high explosives. The report does not say exactly where, when, or how an attack might occur. Two months later, the information is shared with the FBI, the INS, the US Customs Service, and the State Department, and it will be shared with President Bush in August. [US Congress, 9/18/2002; Washington Post, 9/19/2002] This information could come from captured al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Ressam, who warns around this month that al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida has been seeking Canadian passports as part of a plot to attack the US, possibly by planting explosives in several US cities (see May 30, 2001 and May 2001). [Calgary Herald, 4/3/2002]
May 2001: CIA Official Connected to Cases of Moussaoui and Two 9/11 Hijackers Tasked to Help FBI
Tom Wilshire, a former deputy chief of Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, is detailed to the FBI to help with its counterterrorism work. Wilshire was involved in the failure to watchlist 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar during the al-Qaeda Malaysia summit (see 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. January 5, 2000), and will also be involved in the failed search for them in the summer of 2001 (see May 15, 2001, Late May, 2001, and July 13, 2001), as well as the failure to obtain a search warrant for Zacarias Moussaoui’s belongings (see August 24, 2001). He acts as the CIA’s chief intelligence representative to Michael Rolince, head of the Bureau’s International Terrorism Operations Section. His primary role is apparently to help the FBI exploit information for intelligence purposes. [US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 282-348 ]
