CIA official Michael Scheuer will later say, “Clearly, by 2002 in the springtime, it was almost taken for granted that we were going to go to war with Iraq, in addition to having missed Osama bin Laden. It was a nightmare, and I know [CIA Director] Tenet was briefed repeatedly by the head of the bin Laden department that any invasion of Iraq would break the back of our counterterrorism program.” [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006] Scheuer was head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit in the late 1990s and also leads a review of CIA intelligence on possible Iraq-al-Qaeda ties before the 2003 Iraq war (see (Before March 18, 2003)).
March 2002: US Military Pulls Elite Special Operations Group from Afghanistan and Redeploys Them to Iraq
Fifth Group Special Forces—an elite group whose members speak Arabic, Pashtun, and Dari—is pulled from its mission in Afghanistan and sent to Iraq where the group is assigned the task of locating Saddam Hussein. Members of Fifth Group, who spent six months developing a network of local sources and alliances and who believe they were close to finding Osama bin Laden, are upset with the orders. “We were going nuts on the ground about that decision,” one of them will later recall. [Guardian, 3/26/2004] They are replaced by the Seventh Group Special Forces, who are Spanish speakers experienced mostly in Latin America. They have no local rapport or knowledge. [Guardian, 3/26/2004; Newsweek, 8/28/2007] They are also replaced by the Third Group Special Forces, which is trained to operate in sub-Saharan Africa. They speak French and various African languages. [MSNBC, 7/29/2003] CIA official Gary Schroen will later comment, “Well, you could see changes being made in the US military staffing in Afghanistan, that the Green Beret units, the Fifth Special Forces group, for the most of it, were being pulled out to refit and get ready for Iraq. And it was clear that the kind of guys that I think a lot of us believed were essential US military personnel with special operations capabilities were being pulled away.” [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006]
March 2002: Cheney Says Decision Has Been Made to Invade Iraq
Vice President Dick Cheney drops by a Senate Republican policy lunch and instructs everyone that what he is about to say should not be repeated to anyone. He then explains that the question is no longer if the US will attack Iraq, but when. Time magazine reports this in May 2002. [Time, 5/5/2002]
March 2002: Treasure Trove of Al-Qaeda Documents Found in Bosnia Raid of US Charity
In March 2002, the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) office in Sarajevo, Bosnia, is raided by US and Bosnian agents and a “treasure trove” of documents are found. One document found is the “Golden Chain,” a list of early al-Qaeda funders (see 1988-1989). Enaam Arnaout is living in the US as head of BIF, but the Sarajevo investigators discover letters between him and bin Laden, including a handwritten note by bin Laden authorizing Arnaout to sign documents on his behalf. Arnaout prepares to flee the US, but is arrested. On November 19, 2002, the US declares BIF a terrorist financier and its Chicago office is closed down. In February 2003, Arnaout pleas guilty to working with al-Qaeda, but US prosecutors agree to drop the charges against him in return for information. [Burr and Collins, 2006, pp. 46-47]
March 2002: Padilla Begins Planning Attacks on US High-Rise Buildings
An al-Qaeda operations leader gives American al-Qaeda member Jose Padilla (see September-October 2000) an assignment: target high-rise buildings in the US that use natural gas. Padilla and al-Qaeda leaders consider buildings in Florida, Washington, DC, and New York City as potential targets. Though al-Qaeda leaders consider Padilla an incompetent (see Mid-April 2002), they give him $15,000 to begin putting together a plan. [Associated Press, 6/2004] Instead, Padilla will be captured by FBI agents as he comes into Chicago (see May 8, 2002).
March 2002: Bush Official Says 9/11 Is Important Because It Lowers Public Resistance to US Military Adventures
An anonymous senior Bush administration official says, as The New Yorker paraphrases it, “Inside government, the reason September 11th appears to have been ‘a transformative moment,’… is not so much that it revealed the existence of a threat of which officials had previously been unaware as that it drastically reduced the American public’s usual resistance to American military involvement overseas, at least for a while.”
[New Yorker, 4/1/2002]
March 2002: First Secret CIA Prison Built in Thailand
ABC News will later report that the first CIA secret prison is established in Thailand at this time to house Abu Zubaida, the first important al-Qaeda target who is captured at this time (see March 28, 2002). President Bush had recently authorized the creation of CIA prisons (see After February 7, 2002). After being captured in Pakistan and treated for gunshot wounds, Zubaida is flown to Thailand around the middle of April 2002 and housed in a small warehouse inside a US military base. He is waterboarded and interrogated (Mid-May 2002 and After). Later other secret prisons will open in other countries, such as Poland and Romania. [ABC News, 12/5/2005] This prison in Thailand apparently will close some time in 2003. [Washington Post, 11/2/2005] Some reports place the secret prison at the Voice of America relay station near the north-eastern Thai city of Udon Thani close to the border of Laos, but this is unconfirmed. [Sydney Morning Herald, 11/5/2005]
March 2002-September 2004: Saudi Government Charity Slowly Shut Down for Suspected Militant Links
The Al Haramain Islamic Foundation was founded in 1988 as a branch of the Muslim World League charity, and just like the Muslim World League it is closely linked to the Saudi government. It develops branches in about 50 countries, including a US branch based in Oregon. It has an annual budget of $40 million to $60 million, paid by the Saudi government, and about 3,000 employees. It gives considerable aid to religious causes such as building mosques. But by the early 1990s evidence began to grow that it was funding Islamist militants in Somalia and Bosnia, and a 1996 CIA report detailed its Bosnian militant ties (see January 1996). In 1998, several links were discovered between the charity and the African embassy bombings that year (see Autumn 1997 and 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). 
In March 2002, the US and Saudi governments jointly announce the closing of Al Haramain’s branches in Somalia and Bosnia, but Al Haramain defiantly keeps its Bosnian branch open and it is shut down again after police raids in December 2003. [Washington Post, 8/19/2004; Burr and Collins, 2006, pp. 38-41] In December 2002, it is reported that the Somali branch is still open as well. [Christian Science Monitor, 12/18/2002] In late 2002, Al Haramain is linked to the October 2002 Bali bombing and al-Qaeda operations in Southeast Asia in general (see September-October 2002). In May 2003, Al Haramain announces the closing of its branches in Albania, Croatia, and Ethiopia, soon followed by branches in Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, and Indonesia. But this is because of pressure due to suspected militant links, and at least the Indonesian branch secretly changes locations and stays open. [Burr and Collins, 2006, pp. 38-41] In late 2003, Al Haramain Director-General Aqeel al-Aqeel indiscreetly mentions that Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah recently donated money to his charity. Al-Aqeel, Deputy General Mansour al-Kadi, and two other senior officials are fired from the charity by the Saudi minister of religious affairs in January 2004. Interestingly, the Saudi minister is also the chairman of Al-Haramain’s board. In 1997, US intelligence found al-Kadi’s business card in the possession of Wadih el-Hage, Osama bin Laden’s former personal secretary (see Shortly After August 21, 1997). [Netherlands Interior Ministry, 1/6/2005 
; Burr and Collins, 2006, pp. 38-41] In February 2004, the US Treasury Department freezes the organization’s US financial assets pending an investigation. In June 2004, The charity is disbanded by the Saudi Arabian government and folded into an “umbrella” private Saudi charitable organization, the Saudi National Commission for Relief and Charity Work Abroad. In September 2004, the US designates Al-Haramain a terrorist organization, citing ties to al-Qaeda. [US Treasury Department, 9/9/2004; Washington Post, 3/2/2006] The United Nations also bans the organization, saying it has ties to the Taliban. [United Nations, 7/27/2007]
March-April 2002: Some Report Possible 9/11 Hijacker Link to Anthrax Attacks, Despite Thin Evidence
In June 2001, Ahmed Alhaznawi visited the emergency room of Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and was treated for a skin lesion. He was accompanied by Ziad Jarrah. In October 2001, after a series of mysterious anthrax attacks in the US became front-page news (see October 5-November 21, 2001), the treating doctor told the FBI he recognized the two hijackers and thought the wound was consistent with cutaneous anthrax exposure. However, the FBI discounted the possibility that the anthrax attacks originated with the hijackers or al-Qaeda. In March 2002, the New York Times reports that FBI spokesman John Collingwood “said the possibility of a connection between the hijackers and the anthrax attacks had been deeply explored. ‘This was fully investigated and widely vetted among multiple agencies several months ago… Exhaustive testing did not support that anthrax was present anywhere the hijackers had been.’” [New York Times, 3/23/2002] The FBI is criticized by the neoconservative Weekly Standard for focusing its investigation on a possible domestic perpetrator rather that Iraq or al-Qaeda: “Based on the publicly available evidence, there appears to be no convincing rationale for the FBI’s nearly exclusive concentration on American suspects. And the possibility is far from foreclosed that the anthrax bioterrorist was just who he said he was: a Muslim, impliedly from overseas.” [Weekly Standard, 4/29/2002] In March 2002 it is also reported that US forces in Afghanistan have discovered installations that could have been used by al-Qaeda to produce biological weapons. “US forces recently discovered a site near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar that appeared to be an al-Qaeda biological weapons lab under construction. At the lab, ‘there was evidence of the attempt, by bin Laden, to get his hands on weapons of mass destruction, anthrax, or a variety of others,’ Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the US Central Command, said… in an interview.” [CBS News, 3/23/2002] However, little new evidence will subsequently come out suggesting al-Qaeda was behind the October 2001 anthrax attacks.
March-May 2002: Empty Fuel Tanks in WTC 7 Wreckage Suggest Fuel May Have Contributed to Fire on 9/11
World Trade Center Building 7, which collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11, had contained two independently supplied and operated fuel systems for emergency power. The fuel had been in several storage tanks low down in the building. In March and April, two 11,700-gallon tanks that had been located under the building’s first floor loading dock and operated by Silverstein Properties are removed from the collapse site. They show no evidence of fuel leakage. FEMA says that approximately 20,000 gallons of fuel are subsequently recovered from them, which is about 85 percent of their total capacity. In early May, two 6,000-gallon tanks that had been owned by Salomon Smith Barney and were also located below the loading dock are recovered. These were always kept full for emergencies and would have been full on 9/11. Yet now they are damaged and appear to be empty. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “Some fuel contamination was found in the gravel below the tanks and sand below the slab on which the tanks were mounted, but no contamination was found in the organic marine silt/clay layer underneath.” Shyam Sunder, lead investigator of NIST’s WTC investigation, will state that this “suggests that this fuel… could have been consumed in the building.” This finding “allows for the possibility, though not conclusively, that the fuel may have contributed to a fire on Floor 5” of WTC 7. [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 5-15; Associated Press, 6/6/2002; Newsday, 6/6/2002; National Institute of Standards and Technology, 4/5/2005 ; New York City Council, 9/8/2006 ] Some people have speculated that the diesel fuel stored in WTC 7 may have played a role in its collapse (see March 2, 2002). However, FEMA says, “Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence.” WTC 7 housed another 6,000-gallon tank between its second and third floors, which was meant to fuel generators that would supply backup power to the mayor’s 23rd-floor emergency command center (see June 8, 1999). Currently, no data are available on the condition of this tank. [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 5-16 and 5-31]
