The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [151]
When he addressed a class at the National War College that month, the CIA’s Cofer Black said he believed “something big was coming, and that it would very likely be in the U.S.” He also spoke of his foreboding at a meeting with executives at the FBI Academy at Quantico.
The Bureau’s director, Louis Freeh, raised the subject of terrorism, that same day, with Attorney General John Ashcroft, to be told, according to one account—which has since been denied by a Justice Department spokesperson—that Ashcroft “didn’t want to hear about it.” It was not the last time, reportedly, that the attorney general would speak in that vein.
Exactly what warnings CIA director Tenet personally passed to President Bush, what was in the Daily Briefs the President received, and how he responded, we do not know. With one exception, the Bush administration briefs remain classified. Very similar briefing documents, however, went each morning to other very senior officials. Commission staff who read them learned that, in April and May alone, such senior officials received summaries headed “Bin Laden Planning Multiple Operations,” “Bin Laden Public Profile May Presage Attack,” and “Bin Laden’s Networks’ Plans Advancing.”
That the CIA and other intelligence agencies were getting a stream of intelligence is not surprising. Al Qaeda’s security was constantly being breached, notably by Osama bin Laden himself. His “public profile,” to use the Agency’s wording, reflected in part the fact that the terrorist leader had been making triumphalist speeches to his followers. He was also hopelessly indiscreet.
A young Australian recruit to the cause, David Hicks, got off letter after gushing letter to his mother back home. “They send a lot of spies here,” he wrote in May. “One way to get around [the spies] is to send a letter to ‘Abu Muslim Australia’.… By the way, I have met Osama bin Laden about twenty times, he is a lovely brother.… I will get to meet him again. There is a group of us going.”
A follower who served bin Laden as bodyguard, Shadi Abdalla, would recall his leader boasting of plans to kill thousands of people in the United States. “All the people [in the camp] knew that bin Laden said that there would be something done against America … America was going to be hit.”
Even one of the future hijackers was blabbing. Khalid al-Mihdhar, still in the Middle East following his impetuous return home to see his wife and newborn baby, chattered to a cousin in Saudi Arabia. Five attacks were in the works, he said—close to the eventual total of four—and due by summer’s end. He quoted bin Laden as having said, “I will make it happen even if I do it by myself.”
Bin Laden himself went even further, asking a crowd in one of the camps to pray for “the success of an attack involving twenty martyrs.” Had Ramzi Binalshibh not been refused a visa, and had it not proved impossible to replace him, there would have been twenty hijackers on 9/11.
“It’s time to penetrate America and Israel and hit them where it hurts,” said bin Laden. “Penetrate.”
The Taliban regime, worried in part about the potential consequences, asked bin Laden to moderate his outbursts. Their guest got around that by calling in an MBC—Middle East Broadcasting Corporation—TV reporter and telling him—off camera and off mic—that there would soon be “some news.” Then he sat back as an aide, Atef, said: “In the next few weeks we will carry out a big surprise, and we will strike or attack American and Israeli interests.” Others told the reporter that the “coffin business will increase in the United States.” Asked to confirm the nature of the “news”—again off camera—bin Laden just smiled.
Behind the scenes with KSM, he had again become impatient. He was a man with a penchant that many in his culture shared, for auguries