Osama bin Laden is again rumored to be dead. The rumor is first sparked by the French newspaper L’Est Republicain, which publishes what it describes as a confidential document from the French intelligence service Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure saying that bin Laden died of typhoid on August 23. The report is apparently based on information from Saudi Arabian intelligence. The issue becomes, as Time magazine puts it, “the question of the day,” but the accuracy of the report is questioned by French President Jacques Chirac, Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Turki al-Faisal, CIA Director Michael Hayden, and others, who all tell the media they think bin Laden may still be alive. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, remarks that leaks can be used for manipulation, saying, “When there are leaks… one can say that [they] were done especially.” [Time, 9/23/2006; MSNBC, 9/24/2006] Another video of bin Laden footage will be released a week later (see September 30, 2006), apparently by the US. A rumor of bin Laden’s death also preceded an audiotape released earlier in the year (see January 16, 2006, January 19, 2006, and January 19, 2006).
September 25, 2006: Escaped Al-Qaeda Leader Killed in Iraq
An al-Qaeda leader who escaped from a US prison the year before is killed in Iraq. Omar al-Faruq is killed in a pre-dawn raid by British soldiers in the city of Basra. About 250 soldiers wearing night vision goggles attempted to take al-Faruq alive, but he is killed in a shoot-out. Al-Faruq was born to Iraqi parents and grew up in neighboring Kuwait. Counterterrorism expert Rita Katz comments: “It’s surprising for someone like him to be able to make it to Iraq, where everyone knows how he looks. The guy has long al-Qaeda records.” Experts are especially surprised to find he was in Basra, a heavily Shiite area not friendly to Sunni militants like al-Faruq. A neighbor says that al-Faruq arrived about a month earlier and had relatives in a nearby Sunni enclave. Al-Faruq escaped from the US-run Bagram prison in Afghanistan in July 2005 (see July 11, 2005). [New York Times, 9/26/2006]
September 25, 2006: Pakistani President Musharraf Publishes Controversial Autobiography
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan publishes his autobiography, In the Line of Fire, generating a number of controversies: 
He speculates that Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was involved in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl (see January 23, 2002) and is said to have wired money to the 9/11 hijackers (see Early August 2001), may have been recruited by MI6 in the 1990s (see Before April 1993). The Independent will also comment, “he does not mention that British-born Omar Saeed Sheikh, who planned the Pearl abduction, had surrendered a week before his arrest was announced to a general with intelligence links who was Musharraf’s friend. What happened during that week?” [Independent, 11/21/2006] Musharraf writes, “Those who habitually accuse us of not doing enough in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the Government of Pakistan.” [Press Trust of India, 9/28/2006] However, US law forbids rewards being paid to a government. The US Justice Department says: “We didn’t know about this. It should not happen. These bounty payments are for private individuals who help to trace terrorists on the FBI’s most-wanted list, not foreign governments.” [London Times, 9/26/2006] Musharraf then backtracks and claims the Government of Pakistan has not received any money from the US for capturing people. [Press Trust of India, 9/28/2006] He also claims that State Department Official Richard Armitage threatened that if Pakistan did not co-operate with the “war on terror,” the US would bomb it “back into the stone age” (see September 13-15, 2001).
The book does not receive good reviews. For example, the Independent calls it “self-serving and self-indulgent” and concludes that “Readers who want to understand contemporary Pakistan deserve a more honest book.” [Independent, 11/21/2006] In a review with the sub-heading “Most of Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s new book cannot be believed,” the Wall Street Journal writes, “The book is not so much an autobiography as a highly selective auto-hagiography, by turns self-congratulatory, narcissistic, and mendacious.” [Wall Street Journal, 10/19/2006]
September 25, 2006: 9/11 Commissioner Reveals Secret Deal to Keep Bush and Clinton Testimony Classified until 2009
The 9/11 Commission interviewed presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in 2004 (see April 29, 2004) but the details of what was revealed in these interviews were not included in the commission’s final report (with one exception, see August 6, 2001). On this day, former 9/11 Commission Richard Ben-Veniste says, “I had hoped that we had—we would have made both the Clinton interview and the Bush interview a part of our report, but that was not to be. I was outvoted on that question.… I didn’t have the votes.… I think the question was that there was a degree of confidentiality associated with that and that we would take from that the output that is reflected in the report, but go no further. And that until some five years’ time after our work, we would keep that confidential. I thought we would be better to make all of the information that we had available to the public and make our report as transparent as possible so that the American public could have that.” [CNN, 9/25/2006]
September 28, 2006: Report by British Intelligence Official: Pakistani President Should Step Down, ISI Supports Terrorism, War on Terrorism a Failure
The BBC reports on a leaked report about Pakistan from a senior officer at the Defence Academy, a think tank run by the British Ministry of Defence. The author remains anonymous, but he is said to be a man with a military background linked to the MI6, Britain’s external intelligence service. The Ministry of Defence and British government in general say it does not represent their official views. The paper has the following conclusions about Pakistan and the war on terrorism: Pakistan is not stable, and in fact is on the edge of chaos. The Pakistani government, through its ISI intelligence agency, has been indirectly supporting terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq, and attacks overseas, such as the 7/7 London bombings. Western governments have been turning a blind eye towards Pakistan’s instability and indirect protection of al-Qaeda. The US and Britain cannot hope to win against Islamist militant group until they identify the real enemies and seek to implement a more just vision. This will require Pakistan to move away from military rule and for the ISI to be dismantled and replaced. Time is running out for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The US is likely to withdraw his funding and possibly even his protection. Without US support, he is unlikely to stay in power for long. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not gone well. The war in Iraq in particular has been a great recruitment tool for extremists across the Muslim world. A secret deal to extricate British troops from Iraq so they could focus on Afghanistan failed when British military leaders were overruled by their civilian leaders. The enemy the West has identified—terrorism—is the wrong target. As an idea, it cannot be defeated. [BBC Newsnight, 9/28/2006; BBC, 9/28/2006] The West’s fight against extremism is going nowhere with no end in sight. Britain should use its military links with Pakistan’s army at a senior level to persuade Musharraf to step down, accept free elections, and dismantle the ISI.
The report’s author traveled to Pakistan in June 2006 as part of a delegation on a fact-finding visit. He held interviews with the Pakistani officials and academics to prepare a report about the country and the global war on terror. [London Times, 9/28/2006] Musharraf rejects the report’s conclusions. He tells the BBC, “There is perfect co-ordination going on” between Pakistan and Western countries on terrorism, and there is “intelligence and operational co-ordination at the strategic level, at the tactical level.” He rejects the idea that the ISI should be dismantled. “I totally, 200% reject it. I reject it from anybody – [Ministry of Defence] or anyone who tells me to dismantle ISI.” [BBC, 9/28/2006]
September 29, 2006: New Book Causes Controversy Over Previously Unmentioned 9/11 Warning
Journalist Bob Woodward’s new book State of Denial is released. While the book focuses mainly on politics regarding the Iraq war, it also describes an urgent warning that then-CIA Director George Tenet gave to Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser at the time, and other White House officials on July 10, 2001 (see July 10, 2001). [New York Times, 9/29/2006; New York Daily News, 9/29/2006; Washington Post, 10/1/2006] This warning had been mentioned in passing in a 2002 Time magazine article, but it had escaped widespread attention until Woodward’s book. [Time, 8/4/2002] The meeting is particularly controversial because neither the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry nor the 9/11 Commission mentioned in it in their final reports. The 9/11 Commission had learned about it from Tenet in early 2004 (see January 28, 2004). Rice and a number of 9/11 Commissioners deny knowing about the July meeting for several days, until documentation surfaces in the media detailing the meeting and Tenet’s testimony to the commission (see October 1-2, 2006 and September 30-October 3, 2006). Details about the July meeting and surrounding controversies are reported on by the mainstream media for about a week, but there are no articles on it in any prominent newspaper after October 3, 2006. On October 5, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) formally asks Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for hearings about the revelations in Woodward’s book, including controversies surrounding the July meeting. Kerry says in a letter to Lugar, “It is necessary to understand the mistakes of the past in order to ensure they are not repeated, and having testimony from the parties under oath will help to sharpen recollections and clarify the exact nature of this important meeting.” However, no hearings take place. [Kerry, 10/5/2006]
September, 29, 2006: Senator Asks: ‘Why Did They Allow Attacks to Happen?’ ‘Why Didn’t They Get Bin Laden?’
During an interview with Amy Goodman on the radio program Democracy Now!, long-time Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says Congress is not asking two essential questions about the Bush administration’s failure to heed pre-9/11 warnings and to get Osama bin Laden after the attacks: “And, of course, the two questions that the Congress would not ask, because the Republicans won’t allow it, is, why did 9/11 happen on George Bush’s watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen? And secondly, when they had Osama bin Laden cornered, why didn’t they get him? Had there been an independent Congress, one that could ask questions, these questions would have been asked years ago. We’d be much better off. We would have had the answers to that.” [Democracy Now!, 9/29/2006]
September 29, 2006: Senior Defense Officials Allegedly Request Al-Qaeda Detainee Convictions before 2008 US Election
Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon push for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, according to Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay. Davis, whose later resignation is partially caused by this pressure (see July 2007), says the strategic political value of such trials is discussed at a meeting on this day, and that officials prefer “sexy” cases, rather than those that are most solid or ready to go. Davis will later say: “There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up.… People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness.” [Washington Post, 10/20/2007] Davis specifically alleges that Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England says to him and other lawyers, “We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election.” [Miami Herald, 3/28/2008]
Shortly Before October 2006: FBI Says It Is Unsure Who Perpetrated 9/11
The FBI admits it is uncertain about who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. In a book published in October 2006, investigative journalists Joseph Trento and Susan Trento will report that the US government’s no-fly list, which comprises the names of people who are prohibited from boarding commercial aircraft that depart from or arrive in the United States, still includes the names of 14 of the 19 men accused of being responsible for the 9/11 hijackings in official accounts, even though these men supposedly died five years ago (see March 2006). They will suggest that a possible reason for this anomaly is that “the FBI has never been able to confirm the real identities of many of the 9/11 hijackers” and note that on September 21, 2001, CNN reported that FBI Director Robert Mueller “acknowledged that some of those behind [the 9/11 attacks] may have stolen the identification of other people.” They will add that a “top FBI official” said there is uncertainty over who was responsible for 9/11. According to the unnamed official, “There is a real fear we have no assurances as to who really carried out the attacks.” [CNN, 9/21/2001; Trento and Trento, 2006, pp. 189-190, 192] The FBI has also stated that it has found “no hard evidence connecting [Osama] bin Laden to 9/11” (see June 6, 2006). [Milli Gazette, 6/11/2006]
September 30, 2006: New Video of Bin Laden and Hijackers Emerges, but Questions Linger about Video’s Origins
A new videotape showing bin Laden, Mohamed Atta, and Ziad Jarrah in Afghanistan before 9/11 is leaked to the media. NBC reports that the US military obtained the tape at an al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in late 2001. NBC filed a freedom of information act request for the video earlier in 2006, but still had not gotten copies when the London Times somehow got a copy and released it. [MSNBC, 9/30/2006] The Times will only say the video was passed to them “through a previously tested channel. On condition of anonymity, sources from both al-Qaeda and the United States have confirmed its authenticity.” There is no sound, and the Times claims that “lip-readers have failed to decipher it, according to a US source.” One part of the tape shows bin Laden addressing a crowd of about 100 followers on January 8, 2000. Another part of the tape shows Atta and Jarrah together at an Afghanistan training camp on January 18, 2000, apparently while they read their wills. [London Times, 10/1/2006] Ben Venzke, head of a group monitoring terrorism communications called the IntelCentre, says, “It is highly unlikely that al-Qaeda wanted the material to be released in this manner and it is not consistent with any previous release.” He notes that bin Laden previously said he was saving Atta’s last will for a special occasion. This release could have spoiled those plans. Dia Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on militant groups, finds it strange the cameraman focuses on bin Laden’s audience instead of on bin Laden, clearly identifying many of the people in the crowd. “Was this a video by al-Qaeda or by a security agency? I have never seen such a video.” [Associated Press, 10/3/2006] Further, it is noted on the Internet that footage of bin Laden’s speech is remarkably similar to footage of a bin Laden speech in The Road to Guantanamo, a docu-drama released in March 2006. While the film is mostly made up of reenactments, it is based on the real cases of several Guantanamo prisoners and shows one of them being asked to identify himself in the speech footage in 2003.
