Timeline
February 26, 1993
A rented Ford van loaded with a 1500-pound chemical bomb in the underground garage of the World Trade Center. The massive explosion kills six people.
January 1995
A year later, Ramzi Yousef, and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, travel to the Philippines to carry out a scheme they nickname Bojinka, for "big bang." Bombs are to be placed aboard a dozen U.S. 747s, jumbo jets, timed to explode simultaneously as they fly over the Pacific. With four hundred passengers on each plane, more than four thousand people would die. The plot is discovered when the plotter's apartment in Manila catches fire.
August 1996
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed met again with bin Laden at Kandahar in the spring of 1999, to develop an initial list of targets. The list included the White House and the Pentagon, which bin Laden wanted, the U.S. Capitol and the World Trade Center, a target favored by KSM.
Omasa bin Laden spreads the word that he is declaring holy war on America. He calls on Muslims worldwide to join in deadly attacks against the U.S. military to force their withdrawal from Saudi Arabia — where they have been since the first war against Iraq in 1991.
The CIA sets up a small unit to track bin Laden.
August 7, 1998
Suicide bombers hit American embassies in the capitals of Kenya and Tanzania. It is the eighth anniversary of U.S. troops arriving in Saudi Arabia in the lead up to the Gulf War. The two truck bombings, just nine minutes apart, leave 224 people dead and nearly 5000 wounded.
August 8, 1998
CIA director George Tenet reports to the Clinton White House that bin Laden will attend a terrorist conclave at an al Qaeda training camp. The President orders a military assault.
August 20, 1998
75 Tomahawk cruise missiles rain on the Afghan camps. Another 13 hit a plant in Sudan suspected of supplying nerve gas to al Qaeda.
December 4, 1998
President Clinton gets a stunning piece of news. In his daily briefing — what's called a PDB — the CIA tells him that bin Laden and his cohorts are preparing to attack inside the United States, quote, "perhaps including an aircraft hijacking."
December 1998
CIA sources signal an opportunity. Bin Laden will spend the night in the governor's compound in Kandahar. Clinton did sign covert guidelines directing the CIA to go after the al Qaeda leader. But the agents could kill bin Laden only in self-defense, as they tried to capture him.
December 1999
In Port Angeles, Washington, a U.S. customs agent orders a "nervous and strange-acting" man coming off a ferry from Canada to open his car's trunk.
January 15, 2000
Mihdhar and Hazmi book a direct flight from Bangkok to Los Angeles. Undetected, they land in the United States on January 15th, 2000.
October 12, 2000
Two suicide bombers in a dinghy packed with explosives brush the side of a U.S. Navy destroyer docked in Yemen. The blast rips a 40-by-40 foot hole in the USS Cole. Seventeen U.S. sailors are killed, at least 40 injured. Bin Laden recreates the attack for use it in a video to attract recruits for his jihad against America. Although the attack bears al Qaeda's signature, the CIA and FBI refuse to formally declare bin Laden the culprit.
May - December, 2000
Four 9/11 hijackers arrive in the U.S.
January 25, 2001
Five days into his term, President Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice receives a memo from Richard Clarke. In the memo, Clarke declares an "urgent need" that the "Principals," the heads of the CIA, FBI, State and Defense Departments, meet to be briefed on the al Qaeda threat. The meeting does not take place.
April 2001
In late April 2001, the muscle hijackers started arriving in the United States, specifically in Florida, Washington, D.C. and New York.
Thomas Pickard, a 26-year Bureau veteran, is named Acting Director of the FBI. In his Commission testimony Pickard says he briefed both the Vice President and Attorney General Ashcroft on an al Qaeda presence in the United States. Attorney General Ashcroft disputes some of this testimony.
On June 25th, Clarke warns Rice that, quote: "Six separate intelligence reports showed al Qaeda personnel warning of a pending attack."
July 10, 2001
A Phoenix FBI agent notices a number of Arab men at flying schools in Arizona and alerts Washington that bin Laden might be sending students to the U.S. to learn to fly "to conduct terror activity."
Arguing that Zacarias Moussaoui is, quote, the "type of person who could fly something into the World Trade Center," Minnesota agents ask Washington for a warrant to search his computer and his apartment. FBI headquarters responds there is not enough evidence and denies the request.
President Bush receives a stark warning in his daily intelligence brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." The two CIA analysts who draft it testified they wanted to make clear that the threat of al Qaeda striking on American soil is "current and serious."
The CIA adds the names of Hazmi and Mihdhar to a terrorist watch list.
Rice chairs a meeting of the men in charge of the CIA, FBI, State and Defense Departments to discuss al Qaeda. She does not invite Richard Clarke.
Four U.S. planes hijacked by terrorists crash into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people in a matter of hours.
Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller about the Minnesota office's pursuit of Moussaoui.
Public Law 107-306 created The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, an independent, bipartisan commission. In the course of its duties the Commission interviewed over 1,200 people in 10 countries and reviewed over two and a half million pages of documents.
The 9/11 Commission releases its final report.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is captured in Pakistan.
A 2005 CIA Inspector General's report on pre-9/11 intelligence failures is released.
Posted September 14, 2007