MOYERS: In the days and weeks after 9/11, a shocked and grieving people began to ask what government officials had known — and when they had known it. Eight months later, the President's National Security Adviser tries to quiet the criticism.
RICE: I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.
MOYERS: But Condoleezza Rice is wrong.
Had she looked, Dr. Rice might have found in the files of the intelligence community what the 9/11 Commission would uncover. The attack she deemed unimaginable had, in fact, been imagined. Repeatedly.
Twelve times in the seven years before 9/11, the CIA reported that hijackers might use airplanes as weapons.
The most specific of those warnings involve this man: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — or as the spies now call him, KSM.
After evading capture for years, KSM was arrested last year in a middle of the night raid. This is how he looked when he was handed over to the CIA. In custody, KSM has talked. The results of his top secret interrogation, shared with commission investigators, provide a chilling map of the road to 9/11, as well as a surprise. KSM not only imagined the unimaginable, he engineered it.
ZELIKOW: In early 1999, bin Laden summoned KSM to Kandahar to tell him that his proposal to use aircraft as weapons now had al Qaeda's full support.
MOYERS: In terrorist circles, it is even called the "planes operation."
ZELIKOW: KSM 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.
MOYERS: The brainstorming about an attack on American soil began almost a decade before 9/11. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, thumbed through photo albums of American skyscrapers. "We were looking for symbols of economic might," KSM will admit.
February, 1993, just one month after Bill Clinton's inauguration. It is Ramzi Yousef, with financing from KSM, who parks 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. But it fails to bring the towers down as Yousef had hoped.
It is the first warning shot.
Yousef escapes to plot again. Seventeen months later, he and his uncle, KSM, 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.
MOYERS: But as Yousef and another terrorist are mixing chemicals to make the explosives, a fire breaks out in their apartment. Police arrive and discover a bomb factory.
Yousef once again escapes. But his laptop is left behind.
SIMON: The outlines of the plot were found on the computer. And it was a breathtaking plot in its audacity.
MOYERS: Steve Simon, who worked in the Counterterrorism Security Group on the National Security Council at the time, testified before the 9/11 Commission.
SIMON: If it weren't for the accidental discovery of the fire in that apartment, that slaughter that they intended to carry out in the skies over the Pacific would have happened.
MOYERS: One Bojinka conspirator is arrested and he reveals a second, more audacious plot: A plane filled with explosives will be crashed into the CIA. They also want to hit the Pentagon, but as he will complain to interrogators, they need more pilots.
It is an early blueprint for 9/11. Someone else has imagined the unimaginable.
August, 1996. Osama 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. This man is its first director. The CIA would permit him to talk only if we do not reveal his identity. The 9/11 Commission calls him "Mike."
MIKE: The picture that was put together by early '97 certainly was one of a terrorist group unlike any other we had ever seen.
MOYERS: Crucial information had come from an operative who stole $110,000 from bin Laden and was on the run. He walks into a U.S. Embassy in Africa seeking refuge. And he tells startled officials about camps in Afghanistan where young men are training for a global jihad.
MIKE: That occasion was a wonderful example of working hard and then being lucky. He provided us excruciatingly detailed information about al Qaeda and bin Laden's role in it.
MOYERS: Eight years after al Qaeda was created, the CIA finally learns the name of the enemy.
But they still do not know that in Afghanistan, KSM has asked bin Laden to fund an attack "far more spectacular" than Bojinka: mass murder on American soil.
Two years later.
OSAMA BIN LADEN: Every American is our enemy and will be our target.
MOYERS: In 1998, bin Laden issues a fatwa, a religious decree, urging radical Islam to unite to bring his war home to America.
MIKE: The '98 fatwa basically announced a coalition of groups that had joined under the umbrella of al Qaeda and announced that they would no longer focus only on military targets, that all Americans were suitable for attack.
SIMON: We had other source reporting that indicated he was thinking in terms of a quote, unquote, "Hiroshima" for the U.S. We were running around with our hair standing up. This was a guy whose idea of violence was stupendous.
MOYERS: Three months later on August 7, 1998, bin Laden strikes. 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.
SIMON: It was a staggering display of competence and bloodthirstiness — bad combination.
MOYERS: To KSM, the Embassy bombings confirm that bin Laden is willing to hit the United States — and hit hard.
The very next day, 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.
On August 20th, 75 Tomahawk cruise missiles rain on the Afghan camps. Another 13 hit a plant in Sudan suspected of supplying nerve gas to al Qaeda.
In Washington, it is the year of scandal. The capital's political and media elites are engaged in a massive distraction.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: But I want to say one thing to the American people…
MOYERS: Clinton's credibility is crumbling, his judgment suspect.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
MOYERS: "The intense partisanship of the period," the 9/11 Commission reports, will affect the future "use of force against bin Laden."
PRESIDENT CLINTON: And I need to go back to work for the American people.
SIMON: The prevailing reaction to these strikes was "huge blunder, wag the dog." And the prevalence of that reaction tended to blind the American public — and the people, you know, who shape the public's opinions — tended to blind them all to the fact that we were facing a serious, lethal threat.
MOYERS: December 4th, 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."
Two weeks later, CIA sources signal an opportunity. Bin Laden will spend the night in the governor's compound in Kandahar.
MIKE: The intelligence officer in charge on the ground thought we would be lucky ever to get that quality intelligence again.
MOYERS: The field officer insists, "Hit him tonight. We may not get another chance."
But the pending impeachment trial has cut Clinton's room for error. If there is "collateral damage" — if civilians are killed — he will be branded as reckless. With its weapons locked and loaded, the U.S. military is ordered to stand down.
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.
MIKE: It was always easier to have killed him. It was never permissible by the people who made the policy decisions.
MOYERS: The administration is gun shy. CIA officers fume.
Christmas, 1999, one year later. The world prepares for the coming of a new Millennium. The counterterrorism warriors fear the enemy will use the occasion as a symbolic moment to inflict Armageddon on the infidels.
SIMON: The CIA was instructed to go out to all their sources overseas and pump them and pump them again, just squeeze, until the pits popped out of their sources for any information. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was instructed to activate all its wire taps domestically that were related to terrorism investigations.
MOYERS: The vigilance brings results. 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. Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian, is traveling with enough explosives to level a one-square-block building.
In prison, Ressam reveals his target: Los Angeles International Airport.
SIMON: The key thing during this period is that the mobilization was managed at the White House.
MOYERS: At least two terrorist schemes were disrupted. But the celebrations will not last long.
During the worldwide search for millennium plotters, the CIA had pumped sources whose links to al Qaeda are known to be "notorious." They learn that suspected terrorists will travel to Malaysia in early January, 2000.
The spies identify Khalid al Mihdhar and learn that Nawaf al Hazmi is traveling with him. What they do not know is that KSM has called a summit to map out the 9/11 attacks.
Malaysian intelligence catches the men on camera and sends the surveillance to CIA headquarters.
The CIA obtains a photocopy of Mihdhar's Saudi passport and discovers he has a U.S. visa. It was "considered interesting," the head of the Agency's counterterrorism team will tell the commission, but "not heavy water yet." Remarkably, Mihdhar is not added to a terrorist watchlist.
When the Malaysia summit ends, Mihdhar and Hazmi, traveling under their own names, fly to Thailand, seated side by side.
MOYERS: And there, the CIA loses them. The two men — sworn to bin Laden and martyrdom — book a direct flight from Bangkok to Los Angeles. Undetected, they land in the United States on January 15th, 2000.
Using their real names, they rent an apartment in San Diego and obtain California driver's licenses. They even live, for a time, with an active FBI informant.
But the CIA has not bothered to give the FBI their names to check. Neither the informant nor his FBI handler has any reason to suspect them.
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 would recreate the attack and use it in a video to attract recruits for his jihad against America.
MIKE: They humiliated the greatest power on earth and the greatest power on earth couldn't find a way to respond in any way at all, but instead talked itself into paralysis because they couldn't find a smoking gun to identify the people who were claiming to have done it.
MOYERS: Although the attack bears al Qaeda's signature, the CIA and FBI refuse to formally declare bin Laden the culprit. The U.S. does not hit back.
Al Qaeda's "planes operation" is now deepening its roots on American soil.
On May 29th, Marwan al-Shehhi had arrived in Newark, armed with a multiple-entry tourist visa.
Five days later, Mohamed Atta followed him, coming as a tourist from Prague. He was granted the customary six-month stay.
At the end of June, Ziad Jarrah also landed in Newark. He violates his tourist visa almost immediately when he enrolls in flight school.
On December 8th, Hani Hanjour lands in Cincinnati. He's been granted a student visa because he wants to study flying.
All four had trained in al Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan. All four will earn flying certificates from the Federal Aviation Administration. All four will pilot hijacked planes on 9/11.
January 20th, 2001. The job of defending the home front passes from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush.
By law, the new President now heads the National Security Council. He appoints Condoleezza Rice, one of his closest confidantes, as his National Security Adviser.
Five days after the inauguration, Rice receives a memo written by this man: Richard Clarke. Clarke, who managed counterterrorism policy on Clinton's National Security Council, its lead expert on al Qaeda, is kept on the job by Bush and Rice.
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.
That meeting does not happen. As the 9/11 Commission investigates why, the actions of President Bush and his national security team will come under scrutiny.
LEHMAN: Were you told before the summer that there were functioning al Qaeda cells in the United States?
RICE: In the memorandum that Dick Clarke sent me on January 25th, he mentions sleeper cells. There is no mention or recommendation of anything that needs to be done about them.
MOYERS: But that was misleading. In the January 25th memo, Clarke had also attached a plan of action to "roll back" bin Laden.
RICE: We were not presented with a plan.
KERREY: Well, that's not true. It is not…
RICE: We were not presented, we were not presented… we were presented with the…
KERREY: I've heard you say that, Dr. Clarke. If that 25 January 2001 memo was declassified, I don't believe….
RICE: The fact is that what we were presented on January the 25th was a set of ideas…
KERREY: Okay.
RICE: …and a paper, most of which was about what the Clinton administration had done.
MOYERS: To this day, the White House has refused to declassify Clarke's memo. Rice had effectively demoted him, downgraded his office, and informed him he was no longer needed at the meetings of the principals.
ROEMER: How high a priority was fighting al Qaeda in the Bush administration?
CLARKE: I believe the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue but not an urgent issue.
GORTON: Was there any actionable intelligence, under either the narrow or broader definition, that caused you to recommend an immediate military response to some provocation?
CLARKE: I suggested, beginning in January of 2001, that the Cole case was still out there…
MOYERS: In early February, the CIA and the FBI at last agree that al Qaeda had bombed the USS Cole.
CLARKE: I was told on a couple of occasions, well, that, you know, that happened on the Clinton administration's watch. I didn't think it made any difference. I thought the Bush administration, now that it had the CIA saying it was al Qaeda, should have responded.
THOMPSON: The Cole. Why didn't the Bush administration respond to the Cole?
RICE: I think Secretary Rumsfeld has perhaps said it best. We really thought that the Cole incident was past, that you didn't want to respond tit for tat.
THOMPSON: I've got to say that answer bothers me a little bit because of where it logically leads, and that is… and I don't like what-if questions, but this is a what-if question. What if in March of 2001, under your administration, al Qaeda had blown up another U.S. destroyer? What would you have done? And would that have been tit for tat?
RICE: I don't know what we would have done….
MOYERS: Even as the White House takes no action, America's electronic eyes and ears pick up new threats all over the world. By April, the "chatter," as the spies call it, is ominous.
At the same time, there is a changing of the guard at the FBI. In mid-summer, a 26-year Bureau veteran, Thomas Pickard, is named Acting Director.
ROEMER: Did you ever have the opportunity to brief the President of the United States on counterterrorism issues?
PICKARD: No, I did not.
ROEMER: Did you ever brief the vice president of the United States on counter…
PICKARD: Yes, I did.
ROEMER: And did you brief the Vice President on an al Qaeda presence in the United States?
PICKARD: Yes.
ROEMER: And what was his reaction?
PICKARD: He was surprised that al Qaeda was here in the United States, as was the Attorney General.
BEN-VENISTE: According to the statement that our staff took from you, you said that you would start each meeting discussing either counterterrorism or counterintelligence. At the same time, the threat level was going up and was very high.
You said that you told the Attorney General this fact repeatedly in these meetings. Is that correct?
PICKARD: I told him at least on two occasions.
BEN-VENISTE: And you told the staff, according to this statement, that Mr. Ashcroft told you that he did not want to hear about this any more. Is that correct?
PICKARD: That is correct.
MOYERS: Attorney General John Ashcroft disputes Pickard's testimony. But the record shows that when the FBI asks for money to add hundreds more agents to track terrorist threats, the Attorney General says no.
At the same time, Al Qaeda is in high gear, as commission senior counsel Dietrich Snell describes.
SNELL: While the pilots trained in the United States, bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan started selecting the muscle hijackers, those operatives who would storm the cockpit and control the passengers on the four hijacked planes.
MOYERS: The muscle men train for the coming assault using knives to slaughter a sheep and a camel.
SNELL: In late April 2001, the muscle hijackers started arriving in the United States, specifically in Florida, Washington, D.C. and New York. They travel mostly in pairs and were assisted upon arrival by Atta and Shehhi in Florida, or Hazmi and Hanjour in DC and New York.
MOYERS: KSM has instructed them to acquire new, "clean" passports — that won't show their travels to Afghanistan — before applying for U.S. visas.
The nineteen hijackers will clear U.S. customs a total of 33 times. At least six will violate immigration laws while living in the United States. And Mohamed Atta — who commanded the operation — is allowed to re-enter the country even though he'd overstayed his previous visa.
SNELL: In addition to assisting the newly arrived muscle hijackers, the pilots busied themselves during the summer of 2001 with cross-country surveillance flights and additional flight training.
MOYERS: Unknown to the CIA or the FBI, the al Qaeda pilots crisscross the country, scouting weaknesses in airport security, as well as the best time to storm a cockpit. And they have "no problems," Atta reports to bin Laden and KSM, bringing box cutters on board.
SNELL: Each flew first class, in the same type of aircraft he would pilot on September 11th.
MOYERS: The intelligence "chatter" grows louder and more ominous.
On June 25th, Clarke warns Rice that, quote: "Six separate intelligence reports showed al Qaeda personnel warning of a pending attack."
Three days later, he warns her that the pattern of al Qaeda activity indicating planning for an attack, quote, "had reached a crescendo."
In early July, the CIA urgently warns the White House of, quote, "spectacular terrorist attacks" that will result in, quote, "numerous casualties."
"The system was blinking red," CIA director George Tenet testifies. Nearly forty times before 9/11, he briefs the President on the rising threat — a pending attack — by bin Laden. And Condoleezza Rice has known since January that al Qaeda sleeper cells are in the United States.
BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the President at any time prior to August 6 of the existence of al Qaeda cells in the United States?
RICE: First, let me just make certain…
BEN-VENISTE: If you could just answer that question…
RICE: Well, first…
BEN-VENISTE: …because I only have a very limited…
RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but it's important…
BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the President?
RICE: It's important that I also address… It's also important, Commissioner, that I address the other issues that you have raised. So I will do it quickly, but if you'll just give me a moment.
BEN-VENISTE: Well, my only question to you is whether you told the President.
RICE: I really don't remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed this with the President.
MOYERS: But on August 6th, 2001, President Bush does receive a stark warning in his daily intelligence brief, PDB.
BEN-VENISTE: There was nothing reassuring, was there, in that PDB?
RICE: Certainly not.
MOYERS: The two CIA analysts who draft it will testify they wanted to make clear that the threat of al Qaeda striking on American soil is "current and serious."
BEN-VENISTE: The President was in Crawford, Texas, at the time he received the PDB. You were not with him, correct?
RICE: That's correct. I was not at Crawford, but the President and I were in contact, and I might have even been, though I can't remember, with him by video link during that time. The President was told this is historical information — I'm told he was told this is historical information. And there was nothing actionable in this.
MOYERS: The Commission will learn that this "historical information" is, in fact, a pattern of activity leading to 9/11.
BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB.
RICE: I believe the title was "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Now, the PDB…
BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.
RICE: No, Mr. Ben-Veniste, you…
BEN-VENISTE: I will get into the…
RICE: I would like to finish my point here.
BEN-VENISTE: I didn't know there was a point.
RICE: Given that you asked me whether or not it warned of attacks…
BEN-VENISTE: I asked you what the title was.
RICE: What the August 6th PDB said, and perhaps I should read it to you…
BEN-VENISTE: We would be happy to have it declassified in full at this time, including its title.
MOYERS: Two days after Rice's testimony and after the Commission's most heated showdown with the Bush Administration over access to classified information — the PDB, heavily blacked out — is released on the Saturday night before Easter.
The President had been informed that, quote: "Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington."
The President had been informed that FBI information, quote, "indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
And the President had been informed of reports that a group of bin Laden supporters are, quote, "in the U.S. planning attacks."
But the President stays at his Texas ranch for 23 more days. His National Security Adviser does not convene a Cabinet-level meeting to discuss the urgent warnings.
ROEMER: Not once do the principals ever sit down. You, in your job description as the national security adviser, the secretary of State, the secretary of Defense, the President of the United States and meet solely on terrorism to discuss, in the spring and the summer, when these threats are coming in; when you've known since the transition that al Qaeda cells are in the United States; when, as the PDB said on August 6th, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack the United States."
RICE: The PDB does not say the United States is going to be attacked. It says bin Laden would like to attack the United States. I don't think you, frankly, had to have that report to know that bin Laden would like to attack the United States. The threat reporting… the threat reporting…
ROEMER: So why aren't you doing something about that earlier than August 6th, then?
MOYERS: The Commission never gets a satisfactory answer to that question.
BEN-VENISTE: My question to you, sir, is that if you had the information that the President of the United States was requesting what information the FBI had up to that moment about the potentiality for a strike by bin Laden in the United States, would you not have pulsed the FBI to determine from every FBI agent in this country what information they had at that moment that might indicate the possibility of a terrorist attack here?
PICKARD: Yes, I would have.
BEN-VENISTE: Certainly if you knew that the President of the United States was asking…
PICKARD: I was not informed that the President was asking.
MOYERS: There were dots that might have been connected.
For example: As the threats spiked, an FBI officer assigned to the CIA's bin Laden unit, identified by the Commission only as "Mary," is shown the cables from the January 2000 Malaysia summit. She reads that Mihdhar has a U.S. visa, and that Hazmi has flown to Los Angeles. But still, the clues are not sent up the chain of command.
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."
The agent urges a nationwide investigation. Top FBI officials do not see his memo until the afternoon of September 11th.
So that critical clue is not connected with another one discovered by FBI agents in Minnesota.
A French national with North African roots raises suspicion at a flight school outside Minneapolis.
Arguing that Zacarias Moussaoui is, quote, the "type of person who could fly something into the World Trade Center," the 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.
ROEMER: What could you have done with some of that information, with the spiked alerts, with the spectacular attack on the horizon, in the summer of 2001?
CLARKE: I would like to think that had I been informed by the FBI that two senior al Qaeda operatives who had been in a planning meeting earlier in Kuala Lumpur were now in the United States, and we knew that, and we knew their names — and I think we even had their pictures — I would like to think that I would have released or would have had the FBI release a press release with their names, with their descriptions, held a press conference, tried to get their names and pictures on the front page of every paper, America's Most Wanted, the evening news, and caused a successful nationwide manhunt for those two, two of the 19 hijackers.
MOYERS: Not until late August does the CIA finally add the names of the two hijackers they'd lost — Hazmi and Mihdhar — to a terrorist watch list. The FBI still does not order an urgent nationwide search.
Not until September 4th — after almost eight months in office — does Rice finally chair 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.
The Principals meet in the White House Situation Room but take no urgent action.
Seven days later. The "planes operation" — the plan for mass murder that began with KSM's proposal five years earlier — is set.
Nineteen volunteers for the suicide mission begin the check in for their flights.
Each of them will pass through airport security.
7:18 that morning. At Dulles International Airport outside Washington, Khalid al Mihdhar sets off the first metal detector but not the second. He is waved on.
Twenty minutes later, Nawaf al Hazmi sets off both alarms. He is checked by hand and then cleared to board American 77 — along with three other hijackers — and 59 passengers and crew.
GRAPHIC: "The public was not warned." — Final Report of the 9/11 Commission
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