New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) purchases crisis management computer software that it plans to launch for use on September 17, and that will significantly help the city’s response to the 9/11 attacks. [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001; Wired News, 11/2/2001] The OEM is intended to improve New York’s response to major incidents, including terrorist attacks, and play a key role in managing the city’s overall response to an incident. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 283-284] The software it buys, called E Team, is an emergency and event management product created by E Team Inc., a small company based in Canoga Park, California. [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001; e-ProWire, 5/22/2002] John Hughes, a vice president of E Team Inc., in fact used to be the deputy director of the New York City OEM. E Team was originally created for use by the military in battlefield coordination, but the software can now be used by public agencies and private companies, to “prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters and emergencies of all types.” [Los Angeles Times, 12/11/2000; California Technology Ventures, 10/16/2001; Wired News, 11/2/2001] It enables officials to coordinate thousands of workers and hundreds of agencies. [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001] The OEM plans to install the software on special server computers in its Emergency Operations Center on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7, and to launch the E Team system on September 17. [Wired News, 11/2/2001; Council of the City of New York, 8/2002, pp. 22 
] But as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11, the system will instead go into use on September 14, at OEM’s temporary command center at Pier 92 on the Hudson River (see September 14, 2001). [Wall Street Journal, 10/23/2001; e-ProWire, 5/22/2002] Every government organization supporting the OEM command center after 9/11 will use E Team to coordinate its rescue and recovery efforts with the OEM. [California Technology Ventures, 10/16/2001] A report later published by New York City Council’s Select Committee on Technology in Government will say it is ironic that the OEM decides to buy the E Team software in the month before the terrorist attacks in New York take place. The report will comment that the OEM buys the software “in order to better manage precisely the emergency situations that the city faced after 9/11.” [Council of the City of New York, 8/2002, pp. 22 ]
August 2001: Crown Prince Abdullah Warns Bush Against Pro-Israeli Stance in Letter
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah writes to President Bush saying that the administration’s increasingly pro-Israel stance with regard to the Palestinians and other issues is putting the Saudis in a very difficult position. The prince warns that Saudi Arabia may need to reassess its relations with the United States. Bush immediately responds by promising a new, more balanced initiative for peace in the Middle East, including support for a Palestinian state. But the new American initiative will be derailed by the events of September 11. [BBC, 11/9/2001; Tel Aviv Notes, 5/7/2002]
August 2001: FEMA Warns of Likely Terrorist Attack on New York
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issues a report warning of the three most likely catastrophes facing America. One of these is a terrorist attack on New York City. (The other two scenarios are a massive San Francisco earthquake and a hurricane hitting New Orleans.) FEMA managers compiled the list of potential disasters at a training session. [Houston Chronicle, 12/1/2001; Salon, 8/31/2005; Independent, 9/4/2005; New Republic, 9/26/2005]
August 2001: Large Passenger Jet Flown and Landed by Remote Control
US company Raytheon flies and lands a Federal Express 727 passenger jet six times on a military base in New Mexico, entirely by remote control and without a pilot on board. This is done to test equipment intended to make hijackings difficult, by allowing ground controllers to take over the flying of a hijacked plane. The Associated Press will later report, “[T]he Raytheon test used technology that provides the extremely precise navigational instructions that would be required for remote control from a secure location.” The Associated Press will observe, “Unmanned, ground controlled reconnaissance aircraft have been used by the military for missions over Iraq and Kosovo,” and will quote Thomas Cassidy, president of the California-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and manufacturer of the military aircraft, as saying, “It’s a reliable system.” [Associated Press, 10/2/2001; Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 10/28/2001]
Raytheon Employees on 9/11 Planes – Several Raytheon employees with possible ties to this remote control technology and/or Raytheon’s Global Hawk program will be reported to have been on the hijacked 9/11 flights (see September 25, 2001). Earlier in the year, a specially designed Global Hawk plane flew from the US to Australia without pilots or passengers. [ITN, 4/24/2001]
Others Say Remote Control Is Impossible – Contradicting the Associated Press report, a number of media reports after 9/11 will suggest such technology is impossible, or flatly deny its existence. For instance, The Observer will quote an expert as saying, “the technology is pretty much there,” but is still untried. [Observer, 9/16/2001] An aviation-security expert at Jane’s Defence Weekly will say this type of technology belongs “in the realms of science fiction.” [Financial Times, 9/18/2001; Economist, 9/20/2001] And in late September 2001, President Bush will give a speech in which he mentions that the government would give grants to research “new technology, probably far in the future, allowing air traffic controllers to land distressed planes by remote control.” [New York Times, 9/28/2001]
August 2001: Persian Gulf Informant Gives Ex-CIA Agent Information About ‘Spectacular Terrorist Operation’
Former CIA agent Robert Baer is advising a prince in a Persian Gulf royal family, when a military associate of this prince passes information to him about a “spectacular terrorist operation” that will take place shortly. He is given a computer record of around 600 secret al-Qaeda operatives in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The list includes ten names that will be placed on the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list after 9/11. He is also given evidence that a Saudi merchant family had funded the USS Cole bombing on October 12, 2000, and that the Yemeni government is covering up information related to that bombing. At the military officer’s request, he offers all this information to the Saudi Arabian government. However, an aide to the Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan, refuses to look at the list or to pass the names on (Sultan is later sued for his complicity in the 9/11 plot in August 2002). Baer also passes the information on to a senior CIA official and the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, but there is no response or action. Portions of Baer’s book describing his experience wil be blacked out, having been censored by the CIA. [Baer, 2002, pp. 55-58; Financial Times, 1/12/2002]
August 2001: United Airlines Conducting Antiterrorism Training
A flight attendant who will be on board one of the hijacked planes on 9/11 reveals that she is undertaking training to deal with terrorists, but will not give any details. [Rocky Mountain News, 9/6/2006] Kathryn LaBorie has been working for United Airlines for nearly seven years. [Rocky Mountain News, 9/18/2001] While visiting her parents in Colorado Springs, Colorado in the weeks before 9/11, she mentions terrorists and the training she is undergoing at United Airlines to deal with them. Her father, Gene Yancey, later recalls: “She started to say something to me about terrorists, and the fear of, and then she wouldn’t talk to me anymore about it.” He will add, “I don’t know why to this day, but she wouldn’t talk about it any more than that introduction.” [Rocky Mountain News, 9/6/2006] LaBorie will be on Flight 175, the second plane to hit the World Trade Center, on 9/11. [Rocky Mountain News, 9/18/2001]
August 2001: NSA Intercepts Another Call between Yemen Hub and 9/11 Hijackers Alhazmi and Almihdhar in US
The NSA has been intercepting calls between at least two 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, in the US and an al-Qaeda communications hub in Sana’a, Yemen, run by al-Qaeda operative Ahmed al-Hada over an approximately 18-month period before 9/11 (see Early 2000-Summer 2001). According to MSNBC, the final intercepted call comes “only weeks” before 9/11. [MSNBC, 7/21/2004] Around the same time there is great alarm in the US intelligence community over a communications intercept in Yemen indicating there was going to be a major al-Qaeda attack against US interests (see June 30-July 1, 2001). Further, the investigation of the USS Cole bombing has reignited interest in Almihdhar and Alhazmi on the part of the US intelligence community since at least June 2001 (see June 11, 2001 and July 13, 2001). The two of them are placed on an international no-fly list in late August (see August 23, 2001).
August-October 2001: Britain Seeks Indian Assistance in Catching Saeed Sheikh
British intelligence asks India for legal assistance in catching Saeed Sheikh sometime during August 2001. Saeed has been openly living in Pakistan since 1999 and has even traveled to Britain at least twice during that time, despite having kidnapped Britons and Americans in 1993 and 1994. [London Times, 4/21/2002; Vanity Fair, 8/2002] According to the Indian media, informants in Germany tell the internal security service there that Saeed helped fund hijacker Mohamed Atta. [Frontline, 10/13/2001] On September 23, it is revealed, without explanation, that the British have asked India for help in finding Saeed. [London Times, 9/23/2001] Saeed Sheikh’s role in training the hijackers and financing the 9/11 attacks soon becomes public knowledge, though some elements are disputed. [Daily Telegraph, 9/30/2001; CNN, 10/6/2001; CNN, 10/8/2001] The Gulf News claims that the US freezes the assets of Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed on October 12, 2001, because it has established links between Saeed Sheikh and 9/11. [Gulf News, 10/11/2001] However, in October, an Indian magazine notes, “Curiously, there seems to have been little international pressure on Pakistan to hand [Saeed] over”
[Frontline, 10/13/2001] , and the US does not formally ask Pakistan for help to find Saeed until January 2002.
Early August 2001: Saeed Sheikh Receives Ransom Money; Sends $100,000 to Hijacker Atta
The ransom for a wealthy Indian shoe manufacturer kidnapped in Calcutta, India, two weeks earlier is paid to an Indian gangster named Aftab Ansari. Ansari is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and has ties to the Pakistani ISI and Saeed Sheikh. Ansari gives some of the about $830,000 in ransom money to Saeed, who sends about $100,000 of it to future 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. [Los Angeles Times, 1/23/2002; Independent, 1/24/2002] The Times of India will later report that Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed, the director of the ISI, instructed Saeed to transfer the $100,000 into Atta’s bank account. This is according to “senior government sources,” who will claim that the FBI has privately confirmed the story. [Times of India, 10/9/2001] According to some accounts, the money is moved through a charity, the Al Rashid Trust. Some of the money is also channelled to the Taliban, as well as Pakistani and Kashmiri militant groups. [NewsInsight, 1/4/2002; Press Trust of India, 4/3/2002] The money is apparently paid into two of Atta’s accounts in Florida (see Summer 2001 and before). The Al Rashid Trust will be one of the first al-Qaeda funding vehicles to have its assets frozen after 9/11 (see September 24, 2001). A series of recovered e-mails will show the money is sent just after August 11. This appears to be one of a series of Indian kidnappings this gang carries out in 2001. [India Today, 2/14/2002; Times of India, 2/14/2002] Saeed provides training and weapons to the kidnappers in return for a percentage of the profits. [Frontline (Chennai), 2/2/2002; India Today, 2/25/2002] This account will frequently be mentioned in the Indian press, but will appear in the US media as well. For instance, veteran Associated Press reporter Kathy Gannon will write, “Western intelligence sources believe Saeed sent $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings,” although they apparently think the hawala system was used for this. [Associated Press, 2/9/2002] Some evidence suggests Saeed may also have sent Atta a similar amount in 2000 (see (July-August 2000) and Summer 2000).
Early August 2001: Britain Warns US Again; Specifies Multiple Airplane Hijackings
Britain gives the US another warning about an al-Qaeda attack. The previous British warning on July 16, 2001 (see July 16, 2001), was vague as to method, but this warning specifies multiple airplane hijackings. This warning is said to reach President Bush. [Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 5/19/2002]
