CIA Director George Tenet will claim in his 2007 book that “a group of assets from a Middle Eastern service” is unknowingly working for the CIA by this time. Out of the more than twenty people in this group, one third are working against al-Qaeda. By September 2001, two assets have successfully penetrated al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. [Tenet, 2007, pp. 145] The name of the Middle Eastern country is not known. It is also not known when this group first started working for the CIA nor when the assets first penetrated the camps. Nor has it been reported what information these assets may have shared with the CIA before 9/11. It is known that bin Laden was dropping hints about the upcoming 9/11 attacks to training camp trainees in the summer of 2001 (see Summer 2001). Further, US citizen John Walker Lindh was told details of the 9/11 attacks within weeks of joining a training camp that summer (see May-June 2001).
Early September 2001: NYSE Sees Unusually Heavy Trading in Airline and Related Stocks
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later announces that they are investigating the trading of shares of 38 companies in the days just before 9/11. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the New York Stock Exchange sees “unusually heavy trading in airline and related stocks several days before the attacks.” All 38 companies logically stand to be heavily affected by the attacks. They include parent companies of major airlines American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest, United, and US Airways as well as cruise lines Carnival and Royal Caribbean, aircraft maker Boeing and defense contractor Lockheed Martin. The SEC is also looking into suspicious short selling of numerous insurance company stocks, but, to date, no details of this investigation have been released. [Associated Press, 10/2/2001; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/3/2001]
Early September 2001: Sharp Increase in Short Selling of American and United Airlines Stocks
There is a sharp increase in the short selling of American and United Airlines stocks on the New York Stock Exchange prior to 9/11. A short sell is a bet that a particular stock will drop. Short selling increases 40 percent over the previous month for these two airlines, compared to an 11 percent increase for other big airlines and one percent for the exchange overall. United’s stock will drops 43 percent and American 39 percent the first day the market reopens after the attack. [Reuters, 9/20/2001; San Francisco Chronicle, 9/22/2001] There is also a short spike in the short interest in Dutch airline KLM three to seven days before 9/11, reaching historically unprecedented levels. [USA Today, 9/26/2001]
Early September 2001: NSA Intercepts Phone Calls from Al-Qaeda Leader Zubaida to the US
The NSA intercepts “multiple phone calls from Abu Zubaida, bin Laden’s chief of operations, to the United States.” The timing and information contained in these intercepted phone calls has not been disclosed. [ABC News, 2/18/2002] In 2007, author and former CIA officer Robert Baer will comment that “apparently, when Abu Zubaida was captured, telephone records, including calls to the United States, were found in the house he was living in. The calls stopped on September 10, and resumed on September 16 (see September 16, 2001 and After). There’s nothing in the 9/11 Commission report about any of this, and I have no idea whether the leads were run down, the evidence lost or destroyed.” [Time, 12/7/2007] US intelligence had just been warned about a week earlier that Zubaida may be planning an attack on the US (see August 24, 2001). Zubaida’s exact position within al-Qaeda is disputed; he will be captured in 2002 (see March 28, 2002). It appears that a number of Western intelligence agencies were monitoring Zubaida’s calls since at least late 1998 (see October 1998 and After), and continue monitoring his calls in the weeks after 9/11 (see October 8, 2001).
Early September 2001: Al-Marabh Sends Money to Atta, Alshehhi, and Their Supporters in US
Two months after 9/11, the Toronto Sun will report, “[Canadian] and US police probing [Nabil] al-Marabh have learned he had a flurry of phone calls and financial transactions with [Mohamed] Atta and [Marwan] Alshehhi days before the attacks.” [Toronto Sun, 10/16/2001] Additionally, Canadian authorities will claim that in the days before 9/11, al-Marabh sends money through a Toronto bank account to at least three men who will later be arrested in the US for supporting roles in the 9/11 attacks. The names of the three men have not been released. At least $15,000 is sent to the men in the days before 9/11. A source close to the investigation will say, “There are several links between this man and others in the US. There was money going back and forth.” Thousands more will be withdrawn from suspicious accounts in the days after 9/11. [Toronto Sun, 10/4/2001; Toronto Sun, 10/5/2001] US intelligence also intercepts al-Marabh’s associates making post-9/11 phone calls praising the attacks. [Ottawa Citizen, 10/29/2001] Al-Marabh sent money on other occasions. For instance, in May 2001, he made at least 15 monetary transactions, mostly sending money transfers to the US from Toronto. In late June 2001, he transferred $15,000 to an account in the US. It has not been revealed who he sent these transfers to. [New York Times, 10/14/2001; Toronto Sun, 10/16/2001] A Canadian police source will say, “There were a lot of banking activities prior to the attacks. There was a lot of money being moved through accounts, but most were small amounts.” [Toronto Sun, 10/17/2001] Canadian officials will call al-Marabh a “bureaucratic terrorist,” who provided logistical support, funding, and other services to the hijackers. [Toronto Sun, 10/30/2001]
Early September 2001: Almost Irrefutable Proof of Insider Trading in Germany
German central bank president Ernst Welteke later reports that a study by his bank indicates, “There are ever clearer signs that there were activities on international financial markets that must have been carried out with the necessary expert knowledge,” not only in shares of heavily affected industries such as airlines and insurance companies, but also in gold and oil. [Daily Telegraph, 9/23/2001] His researchers have found “almost irrefutable proof of insider trading.”
[Miami Herald, 9/24/2001]
“If you look at movements in markets before and after the attack, it makes your brow furrow. But it is extremely difficult to really verify it.” Nevertheless, he believes that “in one or the other case it will be possible to pinpoint the source.”
[Fox News, 9/22/2001] Welteke reports “a fundamentally inexplicable rise” in oil prices before the attacks [Miami Herald, 9/24/2001] and then a further rise of 13 percent the day after the attacks. Gold rises nonstop for days after the attacks. [Daily Telegraph, 9/23/2001]
Early September 2001: Defense Department Has Evidence of ‘Kamikaze Bombers’ Trained to Fly in Afghanistan
According to a senior Defense Department source quoted in the book “Intelligence Failure” by David Bossie, Defense Department personnel become aware of a Milan newspaper interview with Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, a self-designated spokesman for al-Qaeda. In the interview, he brags about al-Qaeda recruiting “kamikaze bombers ready to die for Palestine.” Mohammed boasts of training them in Afghanistan. According to this source, the Defense Department seeks “to present its information [to the FBI], given the increased ‘chatter,’ of a possible attack in the United States just days before [9/11]. The earliest the FBI would see the [Defense Department] people who had the information was on September 12, 2001.” [Bossie, 5/2004] In 1998, Bakri had publicized a fax bin Laden sent him that listed the four objectives al-Qaeda had in their war with the US. First on the list was: “Bring down their airliners.”
(see Summer 1998) The main focus of FBI agent Ken Williams’s July 2001 memo, warning about Middle Eastern students training in Arizona flight schools, was a member of Bakri’s organization (see July 10, 2001). In 2004, the US will charge Bakri with 11 terrorism-related crimes, including attempting to set up a terror training camp in Oregon and assisting in the kidnapping of two Americans and others in Yemen. [MSNBC, 5/27/2004]
Early September 2001: Suspicion of Insider Trading in Many Other Countries
Numerous other overseas investigations into insider trading before 9/11 are later established. There are investigations in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, Cyprus, and other countries. There are particularly strong suspicions British markets are manipulated. Italy will later investigate suspicious share movements on the day of the attack, as well as the previous day. Japan will also look into the trading of futures contracts. [BBC, 9/18/2001; Fox News, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/24/2001] The British will take just two weeks to conclude that their markets were not manipulated. [American Public Media, 10/17/2001]
Early September 2001: Suspicious Trading in Reinsurance Companies
It will later be speculated that, around this time, people with foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks short sell reinsurance company stocks that are insuring either or both the airplanes and the buildings involved in the attacks. Munich Re, the largest European reinsurance company, loses 22 percent of its value in the two month before 9/11, with about half of that taking place in the week before the attacks. German authorities will later alert the Securities and Exchange Commission of “suspect movements” with Munich Re. [Agence France-Presse, 9/17/2001] Suspicious inquiries into the short selling of millions of company shares are made in France days before the attacks. [Reuters, 9/20/2001; San Francisco Chronicle, 9/22/2001] Munich Re stock will plummet after the attacks, as they claim the attacks will cost them $2 billion. [Dow Jones Business News, 9/20/2001] There is also suspicious trading activity involving reinsurers Swiss Reinsurance and AXA. These trades are especially curious because the insurance sector “is one of the brightest spots in a very difficult market” at this time. [Los Angeles Times, 9/19/2001] A source within AXA will later say, “There are indications that the shorting has been going on for some time. People inside the company could not understand why” there had been so much shorting of the stock in recent weeks. “This could give some explanation why the stocks were going down so much when there seemed to be no apparent reason.” AXA shares drop almost 10 percent in the week before 9/11, and will plummet afterwards. The attacks will cost the company up to $400 million because of its coverage of both airplanes and buildings. [Los Angeles Times, 9/18/2001]
Early September 2001: Phone Call Warning of Big Event in the US in Coming Days Is Just One of Many Such Warnings Recorded by CIA
A few days before 9/11, an Islamic radical named Mamdouh Habib is in Pakistan and calls his wife in Australia. Her phone is being monitored by Australian intelligence. In the conversation he says that something big is going to happen in the US in the next few days. He will be arrested after 9/11 and held by the US in the Guantanamo prison before finally being released in 2005. He will be released because his captors eventually will decide that he did not have any special foreknowledge or involvement in the 9/11 plot. He had been in Afghanistan training camps and had picked up the information there. The New York Times will paraphrase an Australian official, “Just about everyone in Kandahar [Afghanistan] and the Qaeda camps knew that something big was coming, he said. ‘There was a buzz.’”
[New York Times, 1/29/2005] Furthermore, according to The Australian, this call “mirrored several other conversations between accused terrorists that were tapped around the same time by the Pakistani Internal Security Department on behalf of the CIA.” This was part of what the CIA called a sharp increase in “chatter” intercepted from operatives in al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the days just before the attacks, alluding to an imminent big event. [Australian, 2/2/2005]
