The State Department issues an overseas caution connected to the conviction of defendants in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. That warning says, “Americans citizens abroad may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups” with links to bin Laden. The warning will be reissued on June 22. [CNN, 6/23/2001]
May 29, 2001: CIA and FBI Possibly Have Meeting aboutColeand Malaysia Summit, but Nobody Will Later Remember Anything about It
There is some evidence CIA and FBI representatives meet on this day to compare notes about the investigation into the USS Cole bombing and al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit, but an investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) will not be able to confirm the meeting takes place, as all the participants say they are unable to recall whether they attended the meeting or not. If the meeting actually occurs, it is probably attended by CIA officer Clark Shannon, FBI agent Dina Corsi, an FBI agent known as “Kathy”, and FBI agent Margaret Gillespie. The topics of discussion may include the state of the Cole investigation and the identification of Khallad bin Attash in photographs of al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit. Despite the poor memories of the potential attendees, the OIG will later find an email from Shannon to Gillespie saying that they met on this date, and Kathy will say that Shannon’s name sounds familiar. However, the OIG will conclude, “We were unable to determine with certainty whether a meeting… took place on May 29.” [US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 285, 296 
]
May 30, 2001: CIA Leaders Warn National Security Adviser Rice about Expected Al-Qaeda Attack
During a regularly scheduled weekly meeting between National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet, CIA official Richard Blee describes a “truly frightening” list of warning signs of an upcoming terrorist attack. He says that al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida is working on attack plans. CIA leaders John McLaughlin and Cofer Black are also present at this meeting, as is counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke and Mary McCarthy, a CIA officer serving as National Security Council senior director. [Tenet, 2007, pp. 145] Just the day before, Clarke suggested that Tenet and Rice discuss what could be done to stop Zubaida from launching “a series of major terrorist attacks,” so presumably this discussion is in response to that (see May 29, 2001). Tenet will later recall: “Some intelligence suggested that [Zubaida’s] plans were ready to be executed; others suggested they would not be ready for six months. The primary target appeared to be in Israel, but other US assets around the world were at risk.” Rice asks about taking the offensive against al-Qaeda and asks how bad the threat is. Black estimates it to be a seven on a one-to-10 scale, with the millennium threat at the start of 2000 ranking an eight in comparison. Clarke tells her that adequate warning notices have been issued to the appropriate US entities. [Tenet, 2007, pp. 145-146]
May 30, 2001: FBI Is Warned of Major Al-Qaeda Operation in the US Involving Hijackings, Explosives, and/or New York City
Ahmed Ressam is convicted in the spring of 2001 for attempting to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport (see December 14, 1999). Facing the likelihood of life in prison, he starts cooperating with authorities in an attempt to reduce his sentence. On this day, he details his experiences in al-Qaeda training camps and his many dealings with top al-Qaeda deputy Abu Zubaida. According to FBI notes from Ressam’s interrogation, Zubaida asked Ressam to send him six original Canadian passports to help Zubaida “get people to America” (see May 2001 and May 2001). Zubaida “wanted an operation in the US” and talked about the need to get explosives into the US for this operation, but Ressam makes it clear this was a separate plot from the one he was involved with. Notes from this day further explain that Ressam doesn’t know if any explosives made it into the US because once an operation is initiated, operators are not supposed to talk about it to anyone. [Calgary Herald, 4/3/2002; Newsweek, 4/28/2005] Zubaida told this to Ressam in 1999, but also indicated that he is willing to wait a year or more to make sure the plot comes to fruition successfully. [Tenet, 2007, pp. 146]
Similarity to 9/11 Attacks – There’s no concrete evidence that Ressam knows any detail of the 9/11 attacks. [Newsweek, 4/28/2005] However, Fox News will later report that roughly around this time Ressam testifies “that attack plans, including hijackings and attacks on New York City targets, [are] ongoing.” [Fox News, 5/17/2002] Questioned shortly after 9/11, Ressam will point out that given what he’s already told his US interrogators, the 9/11 attacks should not be surprising. He notes that he’d described how Zubaida talked “generally of big operations in [the] US with big impact, needing great preparation, great perseverance, and willingness to die.” Ressam had told of “plans to get people hired at airports, of blowing up airports, and airplanes.” [Newsweek, 4/28/2005]
Sharing the Warning – The CIA learns of this warning in June. [Tenet, 2007, pp. 146] Ressam will repeat some of this in a public trial in July (see July 8, 2001). Apparently, the FBI also waits until July to share the information from this debriefing with most other intelligence agencies, the INS, Customs Service, and the State Department. Ressam’s warnings will first be mentioned to Bush in his now famous August 6, 2001 briefing (see August 6, 2001), but as Newsweek will note, “The information from Ressam that was contained in [Bush’s] PDB [is] watered down and seem[s] far more bland than what the Algerian terrorist was actually telling the FBI.” Zubaida’s second plot will be boiled down to one sentence in the PDB: “Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaida was planning his own US attack.” [Newsweek, 4/28/2005]
May 30, 2001: Yemenis Are Caught Taking Suspicious New York Photos
Two Yemeni men are detained after guards see them taking photos at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City. They are questioned by INS agents and let go. A few days later, their confiscated film is developed, showing photos of security checkpoints, police posts, and surveillance cameras of federal buildings, including the FBI’s counterterrorism office. The two men are later interviewed by the FBI and determined not to be a threat. However, they had taken the pictures on behalf of a third person said to be living in Indiana. By the time the FBI looks for him, he has fled the country and his documentation is found to be based on a false alias. In 2004, the identity of the third man reportedly still will be unknown. The famous briefing given to President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001 (see August 6, 2001), will mention the incident, warning that the FBI is investigating “suspicious activity in this country consistent with the preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” When Bush’s August 6 briefing will be released in 2004, a White House fact sheet will fail to mention the still missing third man. [New York Post, 7/1/2001; New York Post, 9/16/2001; Washington Post, 5/16/2004] In 2004, it will be reported that Dhiren Barot (a.k.a. Issa al-Hindi or Issa al-Britani), an alleged al-Qaeda operative in British custody, was sent to the US in early 2001 by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to case potential targets in New York City. He headed a three-man team that surveyed the New York Stock Exchange and other buildings. While there are obvious similarities between the two Yemeni man with an unknown boss and Barot with two helpers, it is not known if the two cases are related. [New York Times, 8/7/2004]
May 31, 2001: Terrorism Experts Say Al-Qaeda Is Planning to Carry Out Attacks in the US
Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes, both experts on the Middle East and Islamist terrorism, write in the Wall Street Journal that al-Qaeda is “planning new attacks on the US.” Their article is written as a response to the recent guilty verdicts in a New York court against four men accused of planning the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). “Unfortunately,” Emerson and Pipes write, “the trial does almost nothing to enhance the safety of Americans.… Indeed, recent information shows that al-Qaeda is not only planning new attacks on the US but is also expanding its operational range to countries such as Jordan and Israel.”
Al-Qaeda Is ‘the Most Lethal Terrorist Organization Anywhere in the World’ – Emerson and Pipes also write that tens of thousands of pages from the trial transcript “provide a full and revealing picture of al-Qaeda, showing it to be the most lethal terrorist organization anywhere in the world.” The transcript shows that “al-Qaeda sees the West in general, and the US in particular, as the ultimate enemy of Islam. Inspired by their victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the leaders of al-Qaeda aspire to a similar victory over America, hoping ultimately to bring Islamist rule here.”
Al-Qaeda Personnel Have Been Taught ‘How to Destroy Large Buildings’ – The article states that Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, has “set up a tightly organized system of cells in an array of American cities, including Brooklyn, NY; Orlando, Fla.; Dallas; Santa Clara, Calif.; Columbia, Mo.; and Herndon, Va.” Furthermore, according to Emerson and Pipes, court documents show that “[o]fficials of the Iranian government helped arrange advanced weapons and explosives training for al-Qaeda personnel in Lebanon, where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings.”
America Must Fight Al-Qaeda ‘as We Would in a War’ – Emerson and Pipes conclude that the recent trial “shows that trials alone are not enough” when dealing with al-Qaeda. They suggest that al-Qaeda operatives “are better thought of as soldiers, not criminals.” Therefore, they write, “To fight al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups… we must fight them as we would in a war.” This would mean that, “as in a conventional war, America’s armed forces, not its policemen and lawyers, are primarily deployed to protect Americans.” Furthermore, the two men opine: “If a perpetrator is not precisely known, then those who are known to harbor terrorists will be punished. This way, governments and organizations that support terrorism will pay the price, not just the individuals who carry it out.” [Wall Street Journal, 5/31/2001]
Writers Have Been Accused of Anti-Muslim Bias – Emerson and Pipes are controversial figures. Emerson, an award-winning investigative reporter, has been called “the nation’s foremost journalistic expert on terrorism” by the New York Post. [Harvard Crimson, 10/22/1999] And White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke called him “sort of the Paul Revere of terrorism.” But according to Brown University’s alumni magazine, he spent the 1990s “fighting to be taken seriously, and fending off charges of racism and anti-Muslim bias.” [Brown Alumni Magazine, 11/2002] Pipes, a foreign policy analyst, and commentator on terrorism and Islam, “appears regularly in the US media, where he is regarded as an authority on the Middle East,” The Guardian will report. Arab-Americans, however, “regard him as a Muslim basher and a staunch supporter of Israel.” According to The Nation, he “labored in comparative obscurity during the 1990s, writing a series of books and articles that advanced a hard line on Arab countries… and darkly warning that Muslim Americans posed a threat to the United States.” [Guardian, 9/10/2001; Nation, 4/22/2004]
Summer 2001: Lead 7/7 London Bomber Already Radicalized, Linked to Two Future Suicide Bombers
Manchester businessman Kursheed Fiaz will later claim that in the summer of 2001, he is visited by Mohammad Sidique Khan, Omar Sharif, and Asif Hanif. Khan will later be known as the lead suicide bomber in the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), while Sharif and Hanif will both die bombing a cafe in Israel in 2003, killing three (see April 30, 2003). Fiaz will claim that the three came to his offices to encourage young Muslims working there in “the new ways of Islam.” The three discuss traveling to Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to better understand Islam, but the mention of places like Afghanistan turns the potential recruits off. This incident will suggest that Khan was radicalized earlier than previously thought. He apparently attends an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan around this time (see July 2001). The incident also confirms links between the three men, increasing suspicions that Khan helped the other two in a trip to Israel shortly before their suicide attack (see February 19-20, 2003). Fiaz will not disclose this incident until after the 7/7 bombings. [BBC, 7/9/2006] Khan and Sharif are particularly close, as both attend the same mosque in the small town of Beeston, near Leeds. [Independent, 7/24/2005]
Summer 2001: Computer Intruders Probe US Infrastructure’s Digital Switches; Al-Qaeda Connection Feared
A police officer with the Mountain View Police Department in California uncovers a pattern of suspicious electronic probing of the computer systems of public utilities and government offices in the San Francisco Bay area. He notifies the FBI’s computer intrusion squad. The investigation reveals that the intruders are operating from the Middle East and South Asia. They are targeting the computer systems used to control the physical infrastructure of water systems and power plants throughout the US, suggesting a plan for a cyber attack. For many experts who have long warned against cyber terrorism or warfare, the “Mountain View case” as it is called, should be seen as a wake-up call for the government as well as the private sector (see 1996-2008). In a later interview, Richard Clarke, the national presidential adviser on cyberspace security from 2001 to 2003, will say: “The bottom line on the Mountain View case is the ease with which people can do virtual reconnaissance from overseas on our physical infrastructure and our cyber infrastructure.… We were lucky… that there were good people watching.” [Washington Post, 6/27/2002] Despite fears that al-Qaeda may be behind the intrusions (see 2002), the identity of the hackers will not be established. In 2003, Ron Dick, who was the head of the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) at the time, will say that the “case is still pending.… We never were… able to tie it back to any terrorist organizations.” [PBS Frontline, 3/18/2003]
Summer 2001: Pentagon’s Police Force Holds Various, Unknown Emergency Drills
The Pentagon’s police force, the Defense Protective Service (DPS), conducts emergency drills throughout summer 2001. Some members of the DPS subsequently assist in directing rescue efforts at the Pentagon on 9/11. [Los Angeles Times, 9/13/2001]
Summer 2001: FBI Neglects Chance to Infiltrate Al-Qaeda Training Camp
A confidential informant tells an FBI field office agent that he has been invited to a commando-training course at a training camp operated by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The information is passed up to FBI headquarters, which rejects the idea of infiltrating the camp. An “asset validation” of the informant, a routine but critical exercise to determine whether information from the source was reliable, is also not done. The FBI later has no comment on the story. [US News and World Report, 6/10/2002] Around this time, John Walker Lindh, a Caucasian US citizen who recently converted to Islam, goes to one of the training camps for the first time and learns details of the 9/11 in a matter of weeks (see May-June 2001). Also around this time, seven men from Lackawanna, New York, go to a training camp in Afghanistan and hear clues about the 9/11 attacks before they drop out after only a few weeks (see (June 2001)).
