The 9/11 Files: They Could Have Stopped It | Ep 3

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The Bush administration did everything it possibly could to undermine an actual investigation into what happened on September 11th.

But why?

What were they trying to hide?

There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says, fool me once.

Shame on

you.

If fool me, we can't get fooled again.

Well, for one thing, the United States had incredible intelligence on bin Laden and his plans, precise intelligence, actionable intelligence.

On August 6, 2001, President Bush received a presidential daily briefing.

Its title, literally, Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

It continued.

Al-Qaeda members, including some who are U.S.

citizens, have resided in or traveled to the U.S.

for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.

And then it added this, FBI information indicates patterns of suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijacking.

Bin Laden was mentioned no fewer than 40 times in the president's daily intelligence briefing.

CIA Director George Tenet said that in the summer of 2001, quote, the system was blinking red.

So how far-fetched was it that al-Qaeda might hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings?

Not very far-fetched, it turns out.

In May 2001, an intelligence report concluded this, operatives may hijack airplanes, end quote.

The FAA issued a circular to airlines warning of heightened increase in hijackings.

And then in July of 2001, the FAA issued another circular, this one noting that, quote, currently active terror groups were known to plan and train for hijackings and were able to build and conceal explosives and luggage.

Between 1999 and 2001, NORAD, which defends North American airspace, simulated a foreign hijacked airliner crashing into a building in the United States as part of a training exercise.

And they were not alone.

The National Reconnaissance Office, a little-known intelligence agency that runs our spy satellites and remote-controlled surveillance planes, was planning an exercise in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings.

That exercise was on September 11th, 2001, and planned to take place just a couple of miles from Dulles Airport.

That's where the American Airlines Flight No.

77 had taken off before it crashed into the Pentagon.

In other words, the idea of al-Qaeda hijacking an airplane and flying into a building was entirely plausible before 9-11.

Officials knew it could happen, and there were other signs as well.

During the presidential transition in 2000 and 2001, nine months before 9-11, Bill Clinton told President Bush, I think by far your greatest threat is bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

In January of 2001, Philip Zelico, the future executive director of the 9-11 Commission, attended a briefing in which Condoleezza Rice, the future national security advisor, was warned by Sandy Berger, that would be Bill Clinton's outgoing national security advisor, that, quote, the biggest national security threat facing this country is Al-Qaeda.

On July 10th, 2001, the CI Director George Tennant and his counterterrorism deputy, Jay Kofer Black, were so alarmed by intelligence pointing to an impending attack by Al-Qaeda that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Condoleezza Rice and her Security Council staff.

In fact, on the morning of the attacks, Director of Central Intelligence Tennant told a U.S.

Senator, quote, I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training.

And of course it did.

By any measure, including according to the heavily biased commission report, George W.

Bush and particularly Condoleezza Rice had ample warning that Al-Qaeda was plotting an attack.

And by all accounts, the U.S.

intel agencies were fully aware the hijackers were in the United States.

And in fact, it helped at least two of them get get to the United States.

U.S.

intelligence was so strong at the time, on the morning of the attacks, the majority of the hijackers were flagged at the airport for additional screening.

The question is, how did they wind up on the watch list in the first place?

The report never tells us.

Well, my name is Mike Scheuer.

I worked at the CIA for 22 years.

And from 1995 until 1999, I was chief of the Osama bin Laden unit.

I would say it was 1983

to 1992.

I worked

on Afghanistan.

I worked on

the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden was a popular name during the war against the Soviets.

We knew he was fighting in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen.

He was the poster boy for jihad in Saudi Arabia, so he was well known throughout the Arab world.

Osama bin Laden was born in 1957 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, into a well-connected and wealthy family.

He was one of 50 siblings.

His father built a multi-billion dollar construction business, reconstructing, among other things, the cities of Mecca and Medina.

In 1979, Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet invasion there.

After the war, he returned to Saudi Arabia, but he was eventually exiled to Sudan because he was openly critical of the Saudi government's close ties to the United States.

In 1996, he returned to Afghanistan and declared war on the U.S.

In 1996, bin Laden announced what he said was his declaration of war against the United States.

And

it's a very compelling document to this day because it doesn't have anything to do with what the American people were told about either Islam or al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.

The basis of the declaration of war from him was, get out of our land.

That was was a compelling message within a Middle Eastern framework that had been dominated by the United States government and the Israelis since the end of World War II.

Since then, the United States has been repeatedly attacked in the region.

Now, the fanatics behind this bomb have given the French soldiers and their American counterparts 10 days to leave Lebanon or die.

In 1983, a group called Islamic Jihad murdered more than 300 U.S.

Marines at a military barracks in Beirut.

At the time, it was the largest non-nuclear explosion since Nagasaki.

The four-story concrete building collapsed in a pile of rubble.

More than 200 of the sleeping men were killed in that one hideous, insane attack.

In 1993, a Pakistani national called Ramzi Youssef bombed the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

The key question now: was this a one-off attack for the start of a campaign of bombing?

By 1996, al-Qaeda had emerged as the single clearest threat to the United States.

In response to that threat, the CIA created something called ALEC Station, otherwise known as the Bin Laden Unit, which Mike Scheuer ran.

But as it turned out, not everyone at the CIA wanted to help fight al-Qaeda.

We wanted some basic information about Osama bin Laden, his bank accounts, his health information, his educational information, very basic things.

We kept sending a message because it was important.

We were building a base of data.

And so the COS in Saudi Saudi Arabia at the time, John Brennan,

we didn't know if he was dealing with them on the issue or not.

And so we finally sent a message that said, didn't say pretty please, but said, please do this as quickly as possible.

He called tenant.

And

that was the end of that.

Don't send Brennan any more of these notes.

So

whatever the reason was, I don't know.

But, you know, if you identify a liaison

service who you know has information you need,

it's not impossible to persuade them to do it since we defend Saudi Arabia, especially in that case.

We were told not to send any more cables on that issue to

Riyadh.

Just because I was the chief of operations on Osama bin Laden didn't mean there wasn't somebody else working on the same issue in an opposite direction.

And as it turned out,

the opposite opposite direction carried the day

with the approval of presidents.

As Brennan was withholding critical information on bin Laden, the CIA's counterterrorism center started developing a plan to capture bin Laden at a terrorist training facility known as Tarnak Farms.

Tarnak Farms is where he lived.

We knew Osama bin Laden, his family, Zawahiri's family.

and a couple of other, the most senior al-Qaeda people were going to be there.

And initially, the administration went along with it.

The plan was finalized with the help of friendly Afghan tribal leaders.

It was even rehearsed twice in the United States in late 1997.

All it needed was approval from the White House.

On March 7th, 1998, Richard Clark, who headed the Interagency Counterterrorism Security Group, described the plan as embryonic to then National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.

even as the CIA was conducting its third rehearsal of the action.

Military officers in the Pentagon reviewed the plan, and despite some mild misgivings that could have been attributed to interdepartmental rivalries, they generally expressed their satisfaction.

They supported it.

Legal justifications were prepared in advance from the CIA to the NSC for approval.

The Attorney General of the United States, the FBI director, and the U.S.

Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where bin Laden was to be tried if he was captured alive, were all briefed on the plan.

The CIA ran a fourth rehearsal between May 20th and May 24th with the expectation that the plan would be executed in late June of that year and no later than late July.

And yet less than a week later, the CIA's assets in the field were informed that the operation had been suspended by the Clinton administration.

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When we wrote the operational plan,

you have to keep in mind, speaking to the policymaker, you have to keep in mind

that

they have their families there.

And if there is violence, if they don't surrender, there's liable to be people killed,

non-combatants.

They said, okay, we'll go ahead with it.

So that one went almost to the starting gate.

And

one of the last dumps of overhead imagery we got happened to show a

child swing set.

And they suddenly said, oh, we can't do that.

What if that picture gets out and we, you know, we'll be responsible?

A clear pattern emerged throughout Scheuer's tenure at Alex Station.

Whenever there was a chance to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, the Clinton administration chose not to do it.

We had an operation that was planned to kidnap bin Laden within Afghanistan.

The plan was supposed to unfold just days before al-Qaeda bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

It was a plan that required

getting him out of the country and then taking him to another country.

And it was approved, and then it was at a last minute, it was unapproved.

And then a week later, the embassies went up.

The greatest fear tonight is that what has happened here will herald some alarming new phase in international terrorism.

About four o'clock in the morning, George Tennant, who was the

DCI at the time, calls my office number and I pick it up and say, Yep, Scheuer.

I said, yeah.

And somebody else put him on and

he said, can we revive that program?

The president wants to know if we can revive the program on the capture operation.

By tenants' words, realized they missed an opportunity perhaps to stop the operation.

But

that got to be a habit throughout the rest of my career there.

Less than two weeks after the attacks, Clinton launched cruise missiles at targets he said were associated with bin Laden.

Today I ordered our armed forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan.

Our mission was clear.

To strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama bin Laden.

But the strike was worthless.

In fact, it was embarrassing.

The Pentagon targeted suspected terrorist training facilities in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which U.S.

intelligence falsely claimed was making chemical weapons.

The pattern became clearer over time.

The CIA would offer a way to capture or kill bin Laden, and then somebody would call off the strike at the last moment.

To me, it's a mystery.

To me,

going after Osama bin Laden was hard work, but it could have been accomplished by 97.

And then from 97 until I left in 99, there were 10 more opportunities.

And none of them were taken advantage of.

Kill, capture, whatever the government wanted to do.

And the chances kept coming.

In May of 1999, U.S.

intelligence services had a credible lead that bin Laden was at his compound near Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Officials in both the U.S.

military and the CIA agreed this was the best opportunity they could hope for to kill bin Laden.

They had at least three opportunities to strike, but they never did.

Somebody got wet feet.

Scheuer was removed from his role running Alex Station in 1999.

He was replaced with a figure called Richard Blee, who barely comes up in the 9-11 Commission report.

On October 12, 2000, the failure to act in bin Laden caught up to the agency and with our country when the USS Cole, a destroyer anchored in Aden, Yemen, was attacked by a suicide bomber.

Killed 17 soldiers on the USS Cole.

17 American servicemen died, but this time, the government didn't strike anyone or anything in retaliation.

The official reason given by the report for the lack of action was that the administration lacked definitive proof that al-Qaeda was responsible for the terror attack.

We knew right away it was Osama bin Laden.

And then I hear Clinton

on the radio or on the television saying,

well, my experts, my team, my

intelligence community says we can't be sure if it's

Osama bin Laden or not, or al-Qaeda or not.

And we just stood there and said, no, what do I see?

What are you talking about?

In this case, the 9-11 Commission offers excuses for Clinton, citing an absurd blame game with Clinton administration officials who claimed they were waiting for the legal go-ahead from the CIA and the FBI.

But at the same time, then-CIA Director George Tennant is reported to have said that he was surprised to hear the White House was awaiting a conclusion from him on responsibility for the coal attack.

Everyone already knew who did it.

My impression over the course of my career after over 22 years is that the first thing the seventh floor ever considered when you brought them in operation to approve was what if we fail and how will we get roasted by the media.

It took Bill Clinton just 13 days to respond to the embassy bombings.

But for some reason, a reason that has never been explained, he had no response at all to the attack on the USS Cole.

Even more bizarre and telling is the Bush administration's explanation for why it didn't respond.

It was most clearly articulated by the neocon number two at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz.

He described the coal bombing as stale by the time Bush took office.

It was just five months after the terror attacks.

Wolfowitz wanted something bigger to respond to, and soon he got it.

It was remarkable to watch this, especially after the man had declared war on us, reiterated it, said, your time is coming.

We hadn't had a friend like that in terms of divulging what their true mission was since General Jiap.

And we didn't listen to him and look where Eric got us.

And look where we are now.

Not only 9-11, but...

The whole, we lost another war to the Afghans.

If you want to understand why and how 9-11 happened, the years to look at most closely are 1999 to 2001.

Those years coincided with George Tennant's implementation of what became known simply as the Plan.

To formulate this effort, CIA Director Tenant elevated a man called Kofer Black, a former spy who'd risen to head CIA stations in the Sudan and elsewhere, to director of the Counterterrorism Center.

To give you an idea of Kofer Black's character, in 2017, he joined Hunter Biden on the board of directors of Burizma, the Ukrainian gas company.

But at that time, in late 1999, the core of the future 9-11 hijackers were gathering in Afghanistan.

These 22 individuals do not account for all the terrorist activity in the world, but they're among the most dangerous.

The leaders and key supporters.

The planners and strategists.

They must be found.

Here's a summary of some of the warnings they had.

In December 1999, a 23-year-old Algerian man called Ahmed Rassam attempted to cross with a rental car on the ferry from Victoria, British Columbia to Port Angeles, Washington state.

Thanks to alert border security in Port Angeles, Rassam was apprehended with hundreds of pounds of explosives in his car.

His plan had been to set off a car bomb at LAX on January 1st, 2000.

But the biggest warning signs of an impending attack in the United States came in the summer of 2001, just months or weeks before.

On April 20th, 2001, a briefing to top Bush administration officials noted that bin Laden planned multiple operations.

In May 2001, a report was distributed to Bush administration officials noting that bin Laden public profile may presage attack.

On May 16th, 2001, an Intel report mentioned a phone call to an embassy that bin Laden's supporters were planning an attack inside the United States.

On June 12th, a CA report indicated that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed was recruiting people to travel to the U.S.

possibly to aid in terror attacks.

On June 22nd of that year, the CIA notified station chiefs about intelligence suggesting an al-Qaeda suicide bombing in the United States could be on the way.

At about the same time, U.S.

intelligence issued a terror advisory threat indicating a high probability of near-term spectacular terrorist attacks resulting in numerous casualties.

On June 25th, George W.

Bush's counterterrorism czar Richard Clark told Condoleezza Rice that six intelligence reports showed al-Qaeda personnel warning of an impending terror attack.

Three days later, he told Rice that something very, very, very, very big was about to happen.

On June 30th, top U.S.

Intel officials were warned bin Laden planning high-profile attacks of catastrophic proportion.

In July, intelligence reports of an impending attack reached a fever pitch that led to the closure of U.S.

embassies in the Middle East.

None of this apparently got the attention of the White House.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the man who thought the coal bombing was, quote, stale, questioned the reporting in a conversation with Bush's Deputy National Security Advisor.

On July 12, 2001, acting FBI Director Thomas Picard opened Attorney General John Ashcroft's intelligence briefing with the latest on the CIA warnings about an al-Qaeda attack.

Ashcroft responded by saying, I don't want you to ever talk to me about al-Qaeda, about these threats.

I don't want to hear about al-Qaeda anymore.

Picard appealed for more counterterrorism enhancements, meaning funding.

An appeal the Attorney General denied on September 10th.

The United States was attacked the very next day.

By lying to the American public serially and aggressively, the CIA, the Bush administration, and the 9-11 Commission created the perfect condition for conspiracy theories to thrive.

Consider, for example, the established fact that in the days before the attack, there was a huge surge in put options against airline stocks.

Who beside al-Qaeda knew the attacks were coming?

And who specifically profited from these trades?

It seems possible, probably likely, that foreign governments, including supposed allies, knew the plot was coming.

Why didn't they warn the United States?

And why did U.S.

authorities rush to ship all the debris from the attacks abroad almost immediately, making it impossible for engineers to study the crime scene?

Those are just some of the questions we will address in the next installment of our series.