TIMELINE
PART I
01 • September 16, 1986 (page 16)
FDNY firefighter Ronnie Bucca falls five stories during a rescue attempt at a burning West Side tenement. He breaks his back and is not expected to live, but Bucca, an ex-Green Beret paratrooper, vows to return to Rescue One. A year later, he qualifies back into the company.
Bucca
02 • Late 1970s-late 1980s (page 40)
In Afghanistan, the Islamic mujahadeen have been battling the Soviets since 1979. CIA Director Bill Casey backs more than $3 billion in U.S. aid to the rebels, who are called “freedom fighters.” One of the principal supporters of the struggle is young Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden, who has been in Afghanistan since 1979. To further the war effort, Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian scholar, sets up a worldwide network of centers called the Services Office (or MAK) to raise money and recruit for the mujahadeen. The New York City MAK outpost is based at the Alkifah Center in the Al Farooq Mosque on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.
bin Laden
Azzam
Over four weekends FBI surveillance teams follow Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh, EI Sayyid Nosair, Nidal Ayyad, and Clement Rodney Hampton-EI from the Al Farooq Mosque to a shooting range in Calverton, L.I. There they train with Ali Mohammed, an ex-Egyptian Army officer now working with the U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg. Abouhalima, aka “the Red,” and Hampton-EI are both Afghan war veterans.
Abouhalima
Salameh
Nosair
Ayyad
Mohammed
04 • 1989 (page 41)
Azzam's hand-picked representative, an Egyptian named Mustafa Shalabi, runs the Alkifah Center on the first floor of the Al Farooq Mosque. Millions of dollars are raised there each year for the mijahadeen cause.
Al Farooq Mosque
At an Islamic conference in Oklahoma City, Mahmud Abouhalima meets Wadih EI-Hage, a Lebanese Christian convert associated with the Al Bunyan Islamic Center in Tuscon, another Services Office outpost. EI-Hage agrees to supply AK-47s to Abouhalima.
Abouhalima
EI-Hage
As the Soviets leave Afghanistan, a dispute breaks out among the “Afghan Arabs” over the best use of the fortune that continues to pour in. Azzam wants to use the money to set up an Islamic regime in Kabul. Osama bin Laden wants to use it for a worldwide jihad against the West. Mysteriously, Azzam and his two sons are murdered in a car bombing. Though bin Laden professes grief, intelligence analysts believe he was responsible. Within months, with the support of his Egyptian allies Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Atef, and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, bin Laden takes over Azzam's Services Office network, using it as a grid for his new terror network, al Qaeda.
Azzam
bin Laden
al-Zawahiri
Atef
Rahman
07 • 1990 (page 24)
Abdul Basit, a Baluchistani who grew up in Kuwait, graduates from a U.K. engineering school. He enrolls at the University of Dawa and Jihad, an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan. Adopting the name Ramzi Yousef, he begins studying bomb making.
Yousef
The CIA helps Sheikh Rahman enter the United States by approving his visa in Sudan even though he is on a U.S. Watch List. When he arrives at JFK airport he's picked up by Mustafa Shalabi and Mahmud Abouhalima, who becomes his chauffeur and aide.
Rahman
Abouhalima
09 • November 5, 1990 (page 33)
At the Eastside Marriott, Rabbi Meir Kahane is murdered by EI Sayyid Nosair, one of the Calverton trainees. Abouhalima, who has a NYC hack license, was to be Nosair's getaway driver.
Nosair
Abouhalima
10 • November 6, 1990 (page 37, 374)
Later, at Nosair's New Jersey house, Abouhalima and Salameh are taken into custody by the NYPD, who seize boxes of evidence including Arabic tapes of the Sheikh threatening the WTC, Top Secret Special Forces manuals from Fort Bragg, and bomb formulas. But the NYPD treats the case as a “lone gunman” shooting. They conclude there was no conspiracy; Abouhalima and Salameh are set free.
Abouhalima
Salameh
A power struggle breaks out between Sheikh Rahman and Mustafa Shalabi over control of the Alkifah's money. Shalabi is later found murdered in his Brooklyn home, holding two red hairs in his lifeless hand. Abouhalima, who IDs the body for the NYPD, is never charged, and the crime remains unsolved. Wadih EI-Hage has just arrived from the Tucson Islamic Center to watch over the Alkifah's finances. Even though he has been tied to a murder in Arizona in 1989, EI-Hage isn't questioned by the NYPD. Now Shalabi's death gives Osama bin Laden control of Alkifah, which becomes an al Qaeda outpost in NYC.
Rahman
Abouhalima
EI-Hage
12 • 1991 (page 42)
After returning to Saudi Arabia following the Afghan conflict, bin Laden becomes enraged when U.S. troops are stationed in his country during the Gulf War. He begins writing treatises against the Saudi regime, but gets ousted and moves to Sudan.
bin Laden
Nosair's cousin Ibrahim EI-Gabrowny gets $20,000 from bin Laden for Nosair's defense. The FBI later admits that this is the first time bin Laden's name comes up in association with the New York cell members around the blind Sheikh.
EI-Gabrowny
bin Laden
14 • Fall 1991 (page 59)
FBI Special Agent Nancy Floyd recruits Emad Salem, an ex-Egyptian Army major, to infiltrate the blind Sheikh's cell. He's paid $500 a week by the Bureau. The agreement with the FBI is that Salem will act as a pure intelligence “asset.” He will not have to wear a wire or testify.
Floyd
Salem
15 • July 1991 (page 82)
Yousef goes to the Philippines and begins training members of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), part of bin Laden's al Qaeda network. The group is financed by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, OBL's brother-in-law. ASG leader Edwin Angeles calls Yousef “a dangerous man.”
Yousef
bin Laden
Khalifa
Angeles
16 • 1991-1992 (page 198)
From November 1991 to July 1992, Yousef's oldest friend, fellow Baluchistani Abdul Hakim Murad, trains at U.S. flight schools in Texas, New York, North Carolina, and California. He obtains his commercial pilot's license and surveys the World Trade Center as a possible target.
Murad
Nosair is convicted in the Kahane shooting and sent to Attica. Mean-while, Nancy Floyd's asset Salem has burrowed deep into the cell and is getting close to Sheikh Rahman. On a trip to Detroit, the cleric asks Salem to murder Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Salem learns that Rahman is the leader of al Gamma's Islimaya (IG), an Egyptian terror group that tried to assassinate Mubarak in 1990. Soon the FBI discovers that Nosair is also an IG member.
Nosair
18 • 1992 (page 44)
During renovations in the old inspection section of the FDNY, Ahmed Amin Refai, an Egyptian who works as an FDNY accountant, obtains the blue-prints for the World Trade Center. Refai worships at the Al Farooq and Al Salaam mosques, where Rahman preaches.
Refai
19 • 1992 (page 36)
Amid the forty-seven boxes of evidence seized from Nosair's house are Arabic writings in which Rahman's followers are exhorted to attack New York's “civilized pillars” and “high world buildings.” But because of an alleged shortage of FBI translators, the threat to the WTC isn't recognized by FBI investigators until after the building is bombed in 1993.
fbisealw
EI-Gabrowny visits his cousin Nosair in Attica with Emad Salem. Plotting his release, Nosair demands that Salem help build a series of bombs to be detonated at “twelve Jewish locations.” He wants the undercover FBI asset to help kidnap the judge who sentenced him.
EI-Gabrowny
Nosair
Salem
21 • 1992 (page 68)
Operating undercover without a wire, Salem complains to Nancy Floyd that he can't reach Special Agent John Anticev or his partner on the Joint Terrorist Task Force NYPD, Detective Lou Napoli. So Floyd, an agent in the Russian (GRU) branch of the FBI's NY office, works double time to debrief the Egyptian.
Floyd
22 • May-July 1992 (page 85)
As Salem gets deeper into the bombing plot, Carson Dunbar, an ex-NJ State Trooper--and now FBI Asst. Special Agent in Charge of the NY office--takes over the Terrorism branch. In a meeting with Anticev, Napoli, and Salem, Dunbar's subordinate, Supervisor John Crouthamel, calls Nancy Floyd “a bitch” and says he wants her off the Salem investigation.
Clement Rodney Hampton-EI offers to supply Salem with ready-made bombs, but Napoli and Anticev don't show Salem the Calverton photos in which Hampton-EI wears a T-shirt from the Services Office network, now part of al Qaeda. The FBI fails to link the 1989 training to the current bombing conspiracy, and a chance to connect the Nosair cell to bin Laden is lost.
Hampton-EI
Salem
As Salem gets deeper into the bombing plot, Carson Dunbar demands that he wear a wire and testify in open court. Angry that the FBI is changing the terms of his undercover agreement, Salem withdraws. The FBI agrees to pay him $500 for the next three months, and Nancy Floyd continues to meet with him. But by late July, Salem withdraws from the Sheikh's cell. The FBI now has no asset inside the bomb conspiracy.
Salem
25 • July 1992 (page 79)
Ronnie Bucca is sworn in as a fire marshal with the FDNY's Bureau of Fire Investigation. From his military intelligence detachment in the Army Reserves, he hears that the FBI had a mole inside a bombing plot, but cut him loose.
Bucca
26 • September 1, 1992 (page 98)
After Salem leaves the bomb plot, Sheikh Rahman calls Pakistan, and Ramzi Yousef arrives at JFK. With him is Mohammed Ajaj, carrying multiple passports and bomb books. He's arrested and gets the last INS cell. But Yousef is given an asylum hearing and set free.
Rahman
Yousef
Ajaj
27 • Fall 1992 (page 101)
Yousef builds the bomb in Jersey City, helped by three of the Calverton crew: Ayyad, who supplies chemicals; Salameh, who helps build the device; and Abouhalima, the overall facilitator. Ayyad and Salameh set up bank accounts, and thousands of dollars to fund the plot are wired from the Mideast and Europe.
Yousef
Ayyad
Salameh
Abouhalima
28 • Fall 1992 (page 104)
In his last meeting with Nancy Floyd, Salem pleads with her to make sure Anticev and Napoli follow Abouhalima and Salameh. But Floyd has effectively been removed from any terrorism investigative work by Dunbar. Salem's parting words: “Don't call me when the bombs go off.”
Floyd
Salem
From November 1992 up until the bombing in February 1993, Yousef and his cell are highly visible. Salameh is in three car accidents. Yousef is hospitalized and uses a stolen phone card to order chemicals. He runs up $18,000 in phone charges and is recorded by an ATM camera. He talks regularly to Ajaj in federal prison, using three-way calling via a Texas burger restaurant, but the Feds fail to monitor the calls in time. Yousef reports his passport stolen to police and obtains a new one from the Pakistani Embassy in New York. Though he missed his asylum hearing, neither the INS nor the FBI discovers his presence as he builds the 1,500-pound bomb in an apartment on Pamrapo Avenue in Jersey City.
Yousef
Salameh
Ajaj
30 • November 1992-February 1993 (page 111)
After Salameh's many accidents, Yousef calls on Eyad Ismoil, another old friend, who flies to New York to be the wheelman.
Ismoil
During this period Anticev and Napoli lose track of Abo uhalima and Salameh. Napoli later says they weren't able to follow them because they fled to New Jersey. But the redheaded Egyptian is living openly with his German wife and four kids. The Feds know her name (Weber). In fact, they searched Abouhalima's house in 1992 after tracing calls to Weber from Nosair. But as Yousef builds the bomb, they fail to obtain wiretap or search warrants; nor do they use the FBI's Special Operations Group to follow the Red effectively. If the FBI had sat on Abouhalima, he would have led them straight to Yousef and the bomb.
Abouhalima
Salameh
32 • February 1992 (page 106)
In mid-February, alleging that Sheikh Rahman is involved in “international terrorism,” the FBI has sufficient probable cause to get a FISA wiretap on his phone. The Sheikh suspects the wiretap and says nothing of the bombing conspiracy.
Rahman
In late February, Salameh pays $400 in cash to rent a yellow Ryder van. His former roommate Abdul Yasin, an Iraqi City College student, teaches Salameh how to drive it.
Salameh
Yasin
34 • February 25, 1993 (page 112)
On his office computer, Nidal Ayyad types up a letter composed by Yousef claiming credit for the bombing in the name of the the fifth battalion of the Liberation Army. He orders compressed hydrogen to increase the bomb's blasting radius; Abouhalima is present for the delivery of four canisters at the Space Station storage locker in Jersey City.
Ayyad
Abouhalima
35 • February 26, 1993 (page 115)
In the early morning hours of February 26, Yousef, Abouhalima, Salameh, and Ismoil load the bomb into the Ryder truck. A three-car convoy heads to Brooklyn, where Yousef spends the night with Salameh.
Yousef
Abouhalima
Salameh
Ismoil
36 • 12:17 P.M. (page 119)
Just after noon, Yousef parks the Ryder van outside Room 107 on the B-2 level between the Twin Towers. At 12:17:37 the bomb detonates, blowing a four-story crater down to the B-4 level. Monica Smith, a pregnant secretary in Room 107, is instantly killed along with her unborn child. The blast kills 5 others, injures 1,000, and causes half a billion dollars in damage.
Bomb damage at the WTC
37 • (page 123)
Kevin Shea, a close friend of Ronnie Bucca's from Rescue One, is almost killed after falling into the four-story crater. Early the next morning, after visiting Shea in the hospital, Ronnie goes down to the B-2 level to photograph the edge of the ramp from which Kevin had fallen.
Shea
PART II
38 • February 27, 1993 (page 130)
Ronnie Bucca is determined to investigate the bombing, but the FDNY is effectively shut out of the probe by the FBI. So Bucca begins his own investigation, which leads him to the discovery of an unpublished warning from the bombers: They know what they did wrong in failing to topple the WTC, they say, and they pledge to return and finish the job.
Bucca
39 • February 27, 1993 (page 137)
The morning after the blast, Yousef escapes to Pakistan. He is disappointed that the North Tower didn't snap at its base and crash into the South Tower; he had expected 250,000 deaths. A fragment of the unpublished threat letter later discovered by Bucca reads: “Our calculations were not very accurate this time. However we promise you that next time it will be very precise and the Trace Center will be one of our targets.”
Yousef
40 • February 28, 1993 (page 146)
Immediately after the bombing, Emad Salem contacts Nancy Floyd. He tells her the FBI could have prevented the blast if they had just listened to him and followed Abouhalima and Salameh. He soon tips the Feds that Abouhalima has fled to Egypt, and the Red is captured.
Salem
Floyd
41 • March 4, 1993 (page 138)
A VIN number discovered in the rubble leads the FBI to the Ryder agency, where Salameh is arrested after demanding a refund of his $400 deposit. He and Abouhalima, whom the FBI had under surveillance as far back as 1989, are now charged as coconspirators in the bombing.
Salameh
Abouhalima
Salameh's arrest leads the FBI to Yasin, but he convinces the agents that he knows nothing about the plot, even though he was Salameh's roommate. The Feds let Yasin go--and he immediately flees to Iraq, where the price on his head is now $25 million.
Yasin
43 • March 1993 (page 151)
Realizing their catastrophic mistake in cutting Nancy Floyd's asset loose, the FBI rehires Emad Salem to go back undercover. Within months he learns of a bombing plot in the Sheikh's cell, targeting the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan as well as the UN. The Feds, who paid Salem $500 a week before the first bombing, now agree to pay him $1.5 million.
44 • Spring 1993 (page 152)
Vindicated after the WTC bombing, Nancy Floyd helps the Bureau bring Emad Salem back under-cover and keeps him in the fold during the subsequent Day of Terror investigation.
45 • 1993 (page 180)
FDNY Fire Marshal Ronnie Bucca educates himself on the recent history of Islamic terror. With a Top Secret security clearance and operational experience as a Green Beret and decorated firefighter, Bucca wants to contribute to the Yousef hunt, but his application to the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force is rejected. The JTTF effectively excludes the FDNY.
Bucca
46 • June 1993 (page 157)
The FBI raids a safe house set up by Salem, exposing the plot to blow up a series of NYC landmarks including the UN, George Washington Bridge, and two tunnels into the city.
In the course of the sting Salem nets Siddig Siddig Ali (a Sudanese), Rodney Clement Hampton-EI, and Rahman himself, plus nine others. Salem becomes the linchpin witness in the Feds' case.
Salem
Rahman
48 • June 1993 (page 166)
But after the safe house takedown, Salem, now in Witness Protection, admits that in addition to the “bad guy tapes” he recorded his own “bootleg tapes” because he didn't trust FBI superiors. Carson Dunbar and the FBI's top NY lawyer order Nancy Floyd to go to Salem's apartment to retrieve the tapes. Knowing nothing about the unauthorized tapes, which include her own criticism of FBI superiors, Floyd visits the apartment and gets into an argument with FBI attorney Jim Roth over which tapes Salem has consented to release. The attorney takes them all, and Floyd is later heard discussing with Salem how FBI supervisors might have prevented the original WTC bombing if they had let him do his job the first time. She's also heard on tape calling her FBI bosses “gutless” and “chickenshits.” In apparent retribution for her candor, the FBI opens up an OPR internal affairs investigation of Floyd. Rather than being rewarded as the heroine who recruited the FBI's key Day of Terror asset, Agent Floyd is isolated and chastised.
Salem
Floyd
49 • July 3, 1993 (Page 196)
After a siege outside a Brooklyn mosque the Feds take Sheikh Rahman into custody. Two of his loyal followers are Egyptian naturalized citizens and government employees: Ahmed Amin Refai, the FDNY accountant, and Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a U.S. postal worker.
Refai
Ajaj
50 • 1994 (page 192)
As the FBI hunts him, Yousef goes on a killing spree. In March 1994 he reportedly builds an ammonium nitrate—fuel oil bomb targeting the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok, but the truck carrying the device gets into an accident in heavy traffic and the plot is aborted. The driver is found with his body floating in the bomb mix.
Yousef
Ajaj
51 • March 4, 1994 (page 205)
Abouhalima, Salameh, Ayyad, and Ajaj are convicted in the World Trade Center bombing. But Yousef and Ismoil are still at large. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mary Jo White, declares that the verdict should send "an unmistakable message that we will not tolerate terrorism in this country."
White
Ahouhalima
Salameh
Ayyad
Ajaj
52 • March 11, 1994 (page 223)
Agent Nancy Floyd becomes the object of a story leaked to the New York Post suggesting that she is being investigated by the FBI for an alleged affair with Emad Salem. Later, under oath, Floyd vehemently denies the charge, and the bootleg tapes exonerate her. An ongoing OPR investigation finds no evidence to support the charge.
Floyd
53 • June–September 1994 (page 189)
In June, Yousef, a Sunni Muslim, explodes a bomb at the sacred Mashad Reza Shiite mosque in Iran, killing 26. In September, he makes the first of two attempts on the life of Pakistani prime-minister-to-be Benazir Bhutto—first with a bomb, then with a rifle.
Mashad Reza Mosque
Bhutto
54 • 1994 (page 210)
FBI Agent Ken Williams of Squad Five--the counterterrorism unit of the Bureau's Phoenix office--orders a surveillance of an associate of Sheikh Rahman who is training other Middle Eastern men in Arizona as suicide bombers.
Williams
Rahman
55 • July 1994 (page 213)
By July 1994, Ramzi Yousef is the world's most wanted terrorist. Brad Smith, a Diplomatic Security Service Agent at the U.S. State Department, runs Rewards for Justice, a program that offers $2 million for Yousef's capture. Diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, Smith is given just months to live, but he vows to stay alive until Yousef is arrested.
56 • September 1994 (page 216)
Recovering from his wounds after the aborted Bhutto bombing attempt, Yousef conceives three plots. (1) He will kill Pope John Paul II on a visit to Manila in January 1995. (2) He will create an undetectable bomb to be smuggled on board Eleven U.S. jumbo jets entering the United States from Asia. Yousef names this plot Bojinka, after the Serbo-Croatian term for “big noise.” (3) With Abdul Hakim Murad, the pilot trained at four U.S. flight schools, Yousef will coordinate the training of Islamic pilots at U.S. schools who will then commandeer airliners and fly them into buildings in America. This third plot becomes the blueprint for the 9/11 attacks.
Yousef
Murad
57 • November 1994 (page 236)
Yousef plans a fourth plot to assassinate President Clinton during a stopover in Manila en route to an Asian summit. After contemplating hitting Air Force One with a ground-to-air missile and exploding bombs along the president's motorcade route, Yousef rejects the plan and concentrates on the other three plots (the pope, Bojinka, and the precursor to 9/11).
Clinton
On Christmas Eve, in what may have been a dress rehearsal for Yousef's “third plot,” Algerian Islamic terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden hijack an Air France jumbo jet laden with fuel. According to witnesses, the suicidal hijackers intended to fly the plane to Paris to take down the Eiffel Tower.
To help execute his three plots, which he and Murad will stage from Manila, Yousef calls on his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The fourth conspirator is Wali Khan Amin Shah, an Uzbeki veteran of the Afghan war whom Osama bin Laden calls “the lion.” Wali sets up a front company in Malaysia called Konsonjaya to fund the three plots. On the board is an Indonesian cleric named Riduan Ismuddin (aka Hambali), who will later be linked to the U.S.S. Cole and Bali bombings. The money for the three plots will come from bin Laden's brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa.
Murad
Yousef
Mohammed
Shah
Hambali
Khalifa
60 • November 1994 (page 232)
Using his Filipina girlfriend as a front, Shah rents a safe house at the Dona Josefa Apartments along the pope's parade route in Manila. Yousef later checks in to Room 603.
61 • December 11, 1994 (page 238)
Creating a series of false IDs, Yousef mimics the identity of Arnaldo Forlani, an Italian government official. He buys a ticket from Manila to Cebu on PAL Flight 434, with ongoing service to Japan.
Yousef
AS Forlani
Exclusive photo of Yousef's undetectable bomb trigger
Using apparently innocuous parts consisting of a Casio DBC-61 watch as a timer and diluted nitroglycerine in a contact lens cleanser bottle, Yousef boards PAL Flight 434 and builds the bomb on the first leg of the two-leg flight. He puts the assembled device in the life jacket pouch under seat 26K by the center fuel tank of the 747, then deplanes in Cebu.
When PAL Flight 434, bound for Japan, reaches cruising altitude, the Casio alarm ignites the filament of a broken bulb Yousef has embedded in the nitrocellulose explosive. The bomb detonates--killing the passenger in seat 26K and narrowly missing the center fuel tank. The 747 is forced to make an emergency landing on Okinawa.
Cabin damage
62 • December 11, 1994 (page 237)
That night in a Manila karaoke bar, Yousef celebrates his successful “wet test” of the undetectable Casio bomb with Wali Khan Amin Shah and his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Shah
Mohammed
63 • December 1994 (page 248)
Since the 1993 WTC bombing, Ronnie Bucca has developed a database of Islamic terror groups. One of them is the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), which operates out of the Philippines. When they take credit for the PAL bombing, Bucca becomes convinced Yousef is involved.
Bucca
Yousef's chief financier, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, is in U.S. custody in San Francisco. The FBI wants to hold him for questioning; but Secretary of State Warren Christopher prevails on Attorney General Janet Reno to extradite Khalifa to Jordan, where he's been convicted of murder. Once out of U.S. hands, Khalifa gets a new trial and is set free. The decision by State represents a massive loss for U.S. intelligence officials and allows Khalifa to continue financing Yousef's plots.
Khalifa
65 • January 6, 1995 (page 263)
On the night of January 6, while mixing chemicals in his Dona Josefa bomb factory, Yousef accidentally ignites a small fire that fills the room with smoke. The Manila police are called. Yousef and Murad tell a rookie cop that they are just playing with firecrackers. He buys the story and leaves.
66 • January 6, 1995 (page 265)
But when the cop reports the firecracker story, veteran PNP Captain Aida Fariscal becomes suspicious and orders the young cop and a sergeant back to the Dona Josefa. There they confront Abdul Hakim Murad.
Fariscal
67 • January 7, 1995 (page 267)
As the police escort Murad out of the Dona Josefa lobby, he takes off running. The patrolman pulls his gun and fires a shot that zings past the terrorist's ear. Murad suddenly trips and goes down, whereupon the cops arrest him. He tries to bribe Fariscal with $2,000 in American Express checks, but she demands to see Room 603, where he's been staying. When she enters the room, Fariscal is shocked to find a picture of the pope, priest's cassocks, a map of the pontiff's parade route, and a laboratory of chemicals and bombs in various stages of construction. She also finds Yousef's Toshiba laptop, which lays out the entire Bojinka plot to blow up 11 U.S. jumbo jets. By playing a hunch, this local Filipina police captain has found the lair of Ramzi Yousef, the world's most wanted man.
68 • January 7, 1995 (page 268)
But as Murad is led away by the police, Ramzi Yousef watches from across the street. Early the next morning he takes a flight to Pakistan, where he is joined by his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The Mozart of Terror escapes. Both men will go on to plan the 9/11 attacks.
Yousef
Mohammed
PART III
69 • January 7, 1995 (page 276)
Telling PNP officials his name is Saeed Ahmed, Murad is taken to Camp Crame in Manila for questioning. Allegedly tortured, he refuses to talk until he is turned over to Col. Rodolfo Mendoza, an expert on Islamic terror groups. Murad soon confesses details of the WTC bombing. He also admits his role in the pope and Bojinka plots.
Murad
70 • January 20, 1995 (page 277)
Two weeks after his capture, Murad confesses to a plan to fly a small single-engine plane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but says the plot is just in the early planning stages.
Finally, after Mendoza threatens to turn him over to the Israeli Mossad, Murad admits to Yousef's third plot, which is well into the planning stages. He tells Mendoza that ten Islamic terrorists are currently training in U.S. flight schools. The ultimate targets will be the CIA, the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Transamerica Tower in San Francisco, and a U.S. nuclear facility.
CIA Headquarters
Meanwhile, as the hunt for Ramzi Yousef intensifies, DSS agent Brad Smith amps up the Rewards program with posters and matchbooks with Yousef's image promising a $2 million reward.
73 • February 1995 (page 286, 329)
But the master bomber remains undaunted. From hiding in Pakistan, Yousef recruits a young Islamic South African, Istaique Parker, and induces him to plant nitrocellulose bombs hidden in toy cars inside luggage to be checked onto United and Delta flights in Bangkok. Yousef's laptop seized at the Dona Josefa contains details of the Bojinka plot. Within hours after the Room 603 search, Delta and United Airlines are put on high alert. A number of flights are aborted, and some are forced to land.
But at the last minute, Parker gets cold feet. He returns to Islamabad and calls the U.S. Embassy. DSS agents debriefing him learn that Yousef will be returning to Islamabad in a few days. When Yousef calls Parker from the Su Casa, a guest house controlled by Osama bin Laden, DSS agents raid it with Pakistani authorities. The bomb maker is arrested. But his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, staying downstairs, escapes. Astonishingly, Mohammed gives an innocent-bystander press interview and is later quoted in Time magazine.
Exclusive photo of toy cars and nitrocellulose seized in a raid on Yousef's Islamabad lair
74 • February 1995 (page 298)
On a 707 bound for the United States, Yousef confesses to FBI agents his role in the pope and Bojinka plots. He also gives minute details of the WTC bombing. But on his arrival back in New York, as he's being flown by helicopter past the WTC, Yousef delivers a chilling warning. An FBI agent eyes the Twin Towers and says, “You didn't get them after all.” Yousef replies, “Not yet!”
Yousef
75 • February 1995 (page 299)
A week before Yousef's capture, the Day of Terror trial begins. The Feds accuse Sheikh Rahman of leading a “jihad army” dating back to the first firing range sessions at Calverton, L.I. in 1989. Included in the ongoing plot are the slaying of Rabbi Kahane by Nosair (whose defense was funded by Ibrahim EI-Gabrowny) and the WTC bombing. Sidding Ali admits to being the operational leader who chose the UN and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels as targets. He admits that he and Clement Rodney Hampton-EI attended training sessions in Pennsylvania where Yousef's bomb was tested with the help of Mohammed Abouhalima. This demonstrates further that the FBI could have stopped Yousef if they had followed Mohammed's brother Mahmud, “the Red,” who was working directly with Yousef as he built the WTC device.
Rahman
Nosair
EI-Gabrowny
Mahmud Abouhalima
76 • 1995 (page 324)
Emad Salem, Nancy Floyd's recruit, is the Fed's linchpin witness. At one point in testimony he admits that the Day of Terror plot was almost foiled when Carson Dunbar ordered him to remove a timer from the safe house. Called as a defense witness, Floyd is heard on Salem's bootleg tapes pointedly criticizing FBI supervisors for undermining the first WTC bombing investigation. Meanwhile her OPR investigation continues. A fellow agent speculates that Floyd is being punished by her FBI superiors for telling the truth about the failure of the New York office to stop the first bombing.
Salem
Floyd
77 • April 1995 (page 280)
Col. Rodolfo Mendoza turns over the details of Murad's confession to the U.S. Embassy in Manila, including the names of ten Islamic pilots then training in U.S. flight schools and a list of Yousef's six targets in the airline hijack plot including the WTC and the Pentagon.
The FBI acknowledges Mendoza's evidence in a memo classified as SECRET/NOFORN. The memo warns of potential “future attacks” by Yousef against the CIA and a nuclear facility. Later the FBI investigates two of Murad's U.S. flight schools. But the Bureau makes no other mention of Yousef's third plot, and, for unknown reasons, further investigation of the airliner hijacking scenario is dropped.
Even more surprising, while the FBI memo's author suspects Yousef of having links to Osama bin Laden, it describes his WTC bombing cell and the Day of Terror bombers as “a loose group of politically committed Muslims.” The memo concludes that they do “not belong to a single cohesive organization.” This finding conflicts with the U.S. attorney's allegation in the ongoing Day of Terror trial that Yousef and Sheikh Rahman are part of a “jihad army” wreaking a war of urban terror in New York.
SECRET/NOFORN REI TO THE PHILIPPINEE
RAMZI AHMED YOUSEF: A NEW GENERATION TERROISTS
INTRODUCTION:
RAMZI AHMED YOUSEF FIRST CAME TO BOMBING OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER (WTC 1993. AFTER THE ATTACK, HE DISAPPEARE REAPPEARED IN THE PHILIPPINES IN JANUA SUCCESSFULLY UNCOVERED HIS PLOT TO ATT POPE. THE 7 FEBRUARY ARREST OF YOUSEF JANUARY ARREST OF ABDUL HAKIM MURAD. A VICTORIES. WE BELIEVE THE INFORMATION WE HAVE LEARNED TO DATE ABOUT YOUSEF AND HIS PLANS TO LAUNCH ATTACKS, HOWEVER, UNDERSCORES A LARGER THREAT FROM ISLAMIC TERRORISTS. WE CONTINUE TO TRACK DOWN LEADS FROM THE INVESTIGATION AND ARE STILL ATTEMPTING TO IDENTIFY AND LOCATE OTHER ASSOCIATES OF YOUSEF.
Excerpt from SECRET/NOFORN FBI memo
Bureau of Prisons booking mug shots of Abdul Hakim Murad and Ramzi Yousef
79 • April 12-13, 1995 (page 281)
Perhaps most incredible is an admission made by Murad to FBI agents during their flight to New York. As Special Agents Frank Pellegino and Thomas Donlon later record in an FBI 302 form, Murad advises them that “Yousef wanted to return to the United States…to bomb the World Trade Center a second time.”
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
On 4/13/95, SA's Francis J. Pellegrin conducted an interview of ABDUL HAKIM A HASHEM MURAD. MURAD was interviewed a ted from Manila, philippines to New Yor ndictment issued by the United Stated r the Southern District of New York.
I wanted to return to the United State World Trade Center a second time.
Investigation on 4/12-13/95 at Aircraft in Fli
SA FRANCIS J. PELLEGRINO, FBI
SA THOMAS G. DONLON, FBI
FBI 302 Abdul Hakim Murad confession
80 • April 19, 1995 (page 309)
At 9:00 A.M. on April 19, at 5,600-pound bomb made of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane detonates in a yellow Ryder truck parked outside the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children. Eyewitnesses describe several suspects exiting the area, including a Middle Eastern man.
81 • April 19, 1995 (page 309)
Police sketches are released for a Robert Kling, described as a 180-pound, 5'10” white man, and John Doe No. 2, described as 5'9” with olive skin, a thick neck, and slicked-back hair.
Kling
John Doe No. 2
82 • April 19, 1995 (page 310)
Within hours of the blast, Timothy McVeigh is in police custody; Terry Nichols later surrenders. While McVeigh bears a striking resemblance to the eyewitness sketch, Nichols looks nothing like the swarthy John Doe No. 2, Yet within months the FBI drops its worldwide manhunt for the third suspect.
McVeigh
Nichols
83 • April 19, 1995 (page 313)
Hours after the Oklahoma City bombing, Abdul Hakim Murad (now in federal jail in New York) takes credit for the blast in the name of Ramzi Yousef's Liberation Army. FBI agent Frank Pellegrino, who interrogated Murad on his trip from Manila, reports the terrorist's declaration in an FBI 302 later admitted at trial.
A growing body of circumstantial evidence suggests that Ramzi Yousef may have designed the Oklahoma City device for Terry Nichols when he was in Cebu, Philippines, in 1994-95. Nichols's passport shows four trips to the Philippines since 1990; Edwin Angeles, a former leader of the Abu Sayyaf terror group, swears to police that Nichols, aka “The Farmer,” met Yousef in the Philippines in the early 1990s.
Nichols's passport
Angeles
85 • 1995 (page 313)
Passport records show that on November 3, 1994, Wali Khan Amin Shah and Ramzi Yousef applied for Philippines visas while in Singapore. On November 4, Terry Nichols applied for his Philippines visa in Chicago.
86 • 1995 (page 316)
The most curious circumstantial evidence comes from Michael Fortier, the government's star witness in U.S. v. Timothy McVeigh. Fortier swears under oath that the only ammonium nitrate--fuel oil device McVeigh ever built was a dud. Then, after Nichols was in Cebu City at the same time as Ramzi Yousef, Nichols and McVeigh built the 5,600-pound ammonium nitrate--nitromethane bomb that destroyed the Murrah Building.
Yousef
87 • January 17, 1996 (page 327)
Sheikh Rahman is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Day of Terror plot. But in a precursor of things to come, Egyptian U.S. postal worker Ahmed Abdel Sattar vows that “the man will never be silenced,” and the al Gamma'a Islamiya (IG)-- the Egyptian terrorist group that the Sheikh heads--threatens to attack U.S. civilian targets.
Rahman
Meanwhile, Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl, a young Sudanese who worked as an aide to the murdered Mustafa Shalabi at the Alkifah Center, walks into a U.S. Embassy and becomes CS-1, a secret informant for the Feds. In extraordinary testimony he confirms the existence of al Qaeda, describes how Osama bin Laden runs training camps for the worldwide jihad, and tells the FBI that one of bin Laden's closest associates is Assad, aka “the lion,” the nom de guerre of Ramzi Yousef's Manila coconspirator Wali Khan Amin Shah.
Alkhifah Center
bin Laden
Shah
89 • 1996 (page 332)
For the New York office of the FBI, this intelligence completes a circle of evidence dating back to the surveillance photos of the Calverton shooting sessions in 1989--proving a direct link between al Qaeda, bin Laden, and WTC coconspirators Abouhalima, Salameh, Nosair, and Ayyad as well as Day of Terror defendant Hampton-EI. The revelation comes six years before 9/11, but the public doesn't get a hint of the link until February 2001, and the FBI itself doesn't understand the connection between Special Forces Sgt. Ali Mohammed and bin Laden until 1998, following two more al qaeda bombings.
Abouhalima
Salameh
Ayyad
Nosair
Mohammed
90 • 1997 (page 329)
Yousef's uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is secretly indicted by the Feds, who missed him at the Su Casa guest house when his nephew was arrested. In 1997 the FBI learns that Mohammed is in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, but when a team of FBI agents rushes to seize him, he escapes with the help of a wealthy Qatari named Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani. Mohammed flees to the Czech Republic, where he continues to lay the groundwork for Yousef's 9/11 plot.
Mohammed
91 • May 29, 1996 (page 333)
In the first of two prosecutions, Yousef goes on trial in U.S. Federal court in Manhattan for the Bojinka plot and the murder of the passenger on PAL Flight 434. Judge Kevin T. Duffy allows Yousef to represent himself, with the assistance of attorney Roy Kulcsar. In his opening statement the bomb maker claims he was imprisoned in Pakistan at the time the Bojinka and pope plots were set in motion in Manila. There isn't word, from federal prosecutors or Yousef, however, about his third plot--the plan to hijack airliners.
92 • June 1996 (page 350)
Although Eleven Philippine National Police officials testify, Rodolfo Mendoza, who elicited the 9/11 plot confession from Murad, is never mentioned. His own assistant, Maj. Alberto Ferro, testifies that he “cannot really recall” who questioned Murad. Though Murad's training in four U.S. flight schools is mentioned, there isn't a word in the nearly 6,000-page transcript of Yousef's plan to fly airliners into the WTC, the Pentagon, and other U.S. buildings. But the forensic evidence against Yousef is overwhelming. On July 18, 1996, the Feds are about to introduce part of Murad's confession giving details of the Bojinka plot, but then…
93 • July 17, 1996 (page 341)
On the night of July 17, TWA Flight 800 bound from JFK to Paris crashes near Long Island, killing 230 people. The explosion takes place near row 26, adjacent to the center fuel tank--an area identical to the detonation point aboard PAL Flight 434. When the wreckage is assembled in a hangar, the high explosives RDX, PETN, and nitroglycerine are found near row 26. The explosion mimics the Bojinka plot; Yousef's attorney, Kulcsar, argues that the news event will prejudice the jury.
TWA 800 wreckage
94 • 1996 (page 346)
James Kallstrom, head of the FBI's New York office, immediately suspects terrorism, with Yousef's cell at the top of the list. But the National Transportation Safety Board believes the cause of the center fuel tank explosion was mechanical error. The presence of high explosives is explained as residue from a test on the plane with a bomb-sniffing dog a month before the crash. But despite the lack of definitive proof that a spark of fuel vapors caused the explosion, the presence of RDX in the aft cargo hold (where the dog never visited), and other evidence of an explosion, Kallstrom bows to pressure from the NTSB and other senior Bureau officials, and after 16 months the investigation is ordered “shut down.”
Kallstrom
95 • September 5, 1996 (page 347)
The question of whether Yousef's cell had a hand in the downing of TWA 800 becomes moot by Sept. 5, however, when he's convicted with Murad and Shah for the Bojinka plot. FBI Agent Frank Pellegrino, who interrogated Murad, calls his FBI supervisor to say, “It's over. We won.” But even from federal lockup, Yousef continues to plot further terrorist acts.
Meanwhile, in Phoenix, FBI intelligence asset Harry Ellen, who has close ties to Yasser Arafat and the PLO, tells his FBI control agent, Ken Williams, about an Algerian flight school instructor he's seen talking to a reputed associate of Sheikh Rahman. Ellen advises Williams to monitor the instructor, but Ellen is reportedly told to “leave it alone.” Soon after that, 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour begins pilot training at CRM Airline Training Center in Arizona.
Hanjour
97 • 1996-1997 (page 338)
Now, in a desperate effort to trap Yousef, the Feds enlist the help of Gregory Scarpa Jr., a Colombo crime family member and an inmate in the cell adjoining Yousef's in the Manhattan federal jail. With a female FBI agent posing as a paralegal, Scarpa is given a camera to photograph Yousef's bomb formulas and allowed to use a telephone “patch-through” whereby calls can be made outside the jail (monitored by the FBI). But the plan backfires: Yousef is reportedly able to use the connection to make a number of al Qaeda--related calls to Afghanistan and to sources procuring passports for jihadis entering the United States.
Scarpa
In August, FBI agents raid the home of Wadih EI-Hage in Kenya and discover evidence of an East African cell plotting terrorism with ties to the “Haj”--aka Osama bin Laden. Under the mistaken belief that they can turn EI-Hage, who was bin Laden's personal secretary, they allow him to flee Kenya for New York. There he stonewalls in front of a federal grand jury and is set free. A walk-in to the U.S. Embassy in Kenya warns of a possible bombing, but he's ignored.
EI-Hage
99 • August 31, 1997 (page 361)
Ghasoub Ghalyoun, a Syrian with links to al Qaeda, takes what Spanish officials later describe as possible surveillance video for the 9/11 attacks. The WTC is taped along with other U.S. landmarks, including the Sears Tower. The Syrian even has himself taped next to a sculpture in the WTC Plaza--one of the few pieces to survive 9/11.
Ghalyoun
WTC video
100 • August 1997 (page 364)
Meanwhile, back in New York, Ramzi Yousef comes to trial again, this time with Eyad Ismoil for the 1993 WTC bombing. Described by Asst. U.S. Attorney David Kelly as a “cold blooded killer,” Yousef allows Roy Kulcsar (left) to represent him this time. But after months of trial and three days of jury deliberations, the pair is found guilty on all counts. It's another victory for the Feds, who seem assured that the threat from Yousef, the blind Sheikh, and their associates is now over. But within days there's a chilling reminder of the ongoing threat.
Six terrorists from the IG, the Egyptian Islamic Group tied to Sheikh Rahman, slaughter 62 people at Luxor in Egypt including three generations of the Turners, a British family. The terrorists slit open the bodies and insert leaflets demanding the release of the blind Sheikh from U.S. prison.
In the wake of their victory over Yousef, the Luxor massacre represents another missed series of dots for the New York Feds. As far back as 1991 Det. Lou Napoli had linked El-Sayyid Nossair to the IG, which Sheikh Rahman was directing. Now, unknown to the FBl, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, the U.S. postman, is allegedly conducting the IG's business out of his home on staten Island while receiving Rahman's directions from federal prison in Minnesota. His reported activities are later set forth in an April 2002 federal indictment.
Rahman
103 • January 8, 1998 (page 330, 367)
Calling Yousef “an apostle of evil,” Judge Duffy sentences him to 240 years in solitary--one year for the combined ages on his WTC victims. Defiant to the end, the bomb maker says, “I am a terrorist and I am proud of it.” The same day, the Feds unseal a secret indictment of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed dating back to 1996. For unknown reasons, the Justice Department has kept the hunt for Mohammed quiet for almost two years--in contrast to the well-publicized Yousef hunt, which helped trigger his capture.
104 • January 8, 1998 (page 369)
Now, as with his nephew, the announced reward is $2 million. But by 1998 Mohammed is in the advanced stages of executing Yousef's third plot. As Islamic pilots train in U.S. flight schools, Mohammed prepares to establish a cell in Hamburg, Germany. Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian, will take the place of Murad as chief hijacker-pilot in what Mohammed will later call “Holy Tuesday.”
Mohammed
Atta
105 • January 1998 (page 362-363)
Despite Yousef's imprisonment, Ronnie Bucca believes the threat from the bomb maker's al Qaeda associates is ongoing. Now serving with the Army Reserve's 3413th Military Intelligence Detachment of the 800th MPs at the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center in Washington, Bucca studies declassified DIAC link charts that show a direct connection between Ramzi Yousef and Osama bin Laden. He warns his colleagues and superiors in the FDNY of an on-going threat to New York in general, and the WTC in particular.
Bucca
DIAC link chart/WTC/Day of Terror Plots
106 • February 5, 1998 (page 371)
Testifying before Congress, Dale Watson, the FBI's assistant director for counterterrorism, says, “Although we should not allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security, I believe it is important to note that in the five years since the Trade Center bombing, no significant act of foreign-directed terrorism has occurred on American soil.” Watson later tells Congress that he knows of only three al Qaeda suspects in the United States prior to August 1998. But this testimony directly conflicts with evidence in FBI files linking the Yousef-Rahman cells to Osama bin Laden as early as 1991.
Watson
107 • February 1998 (page 372)
Within days, bin Laden issues a fatwa under the banner of the “International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders.” In it he encourages Muslims to kill Americans--including civilians--anywhere in the world where they are found. From this point on, the warnings increase exponentially…
bin Laden
Steve Gale, a terrorism specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, warns the FAA of two possible scenarios for U.S. attacks. One calls for crashing planes into nuclear plants. The second warns that terrorists might crash a FedEx cargo plane into the WTC, Pentagon, White House, Sears Tower, or Golden Gate Bridge.
The FBI's chief pilot in Oklahoma City reports that he had seen Middle Eastern men “who appeared to be either using planes or obtaining flight training…that could be used for terrorist purposes.” But the information never leaves the Bureau field office.
The most shocking dot comes in August 1998, when the FAA and the Bureau pick up intelligence that unidentified Arabs are planning to fly “an explosive-laden plane” from an unnamed country into the World Trade Center. The FAA reportedly finds the plot “highly unlikely, given the state of the foreign country's aviation program.” The FBI's New York office files the intel away without taking action.
111 • August 7, 1998 (page 372)
During a search of the apartment of Khalid al-Fawwaz, who headed al Qaeda's London office, investigators discover bomb-making manuals virtually identical to the ones that Mohammed Ajaj brought into JFK with Ramzi Yousef in September 1992. But that discovery is eclipsed by events that take place in Africa the same day--events the FBI had been warned about a year earlier, when it penetrated the al Qaeda cell in Kenya.
Ajaj
112 • August 7, 1998 (page 359)
Nearly twelve months after the FBI found evidence of a potential al Qaeda bombing plot at Wadih El-Hage's Kenya residence, the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, are struck almost simultaneously by truck bombs. The combined death toll is 234, with more than 5,000 injured.
113 • September 1998 (page 374)
A month later the FBI arrests Ali Mohammed, the traitorous Egyptian who had worked as a U.S. Special Forces Army sergeant while training Nosair's cell. But Bureau agents are stunned to learn how many missed signals he'd given them over the years.
Not only had Mohammed trained Abouhalima and Salameh at Calverton in 1989, but he'd supplied the Top Secret manuals from Fort Bragg that were seized in Nosair's apartment and overlooked by the NYPD and the FBI.
Mohammed
Calverton
Abouhalima
Salameh
Nosair
Even worse, Mohammed used his knowledge of Green Beret of Green Beret operations to train al Qaeda's top commanders in al Khost, Afghanistan, as well as bin Laden's personal bodyguards in Sudan. He even took reconnaissance photos prior to the African embassy bombings.
bin Laden
114 • October 1998 (page 374)
In October, playing catch-up, the Feds finally indict Wadih El-Hage, a key link between Yousef, the Sheikh, and Osama bin Laden. But over the years he's left a trail of dots that the FBI repeatedly missed. He supplied guns to Mahmud Abouhalima in 1989. He came to Brooklyn from Tucson at the time of Mustafa Shalabi's murder, and visited El-Sayid Nosair in jail. He frequented the Al Bunyan center in Tucson, and the same al Qaeda-linked center was cited on the fake IDs used by Yousef and Ajaj when they flew into JFK in 1992. El-Hage became bin Laden's personal secretary in Sudan in the mid-1990s and was part of the Nairobi bombing cell.
El-Hage
115 • October 1998 (page 376)
By now, Mohammed Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh have set up a safe house at 54 Marienstrasse in Hamburg. Over the months to come it will serve as a combination crash pad and flight training center for the suicidal jihadis who will perfect Ramzi Yousef's third plot.
Atta
Binalshibh
116 • October 1998 (page 377)
After five and a half years, Special Agent Nancy Floyd is given a thirty-day suspension for “insubordination” in her dealings with ASAC Carson Dunbar over the matter of whether Emad Salem should have worn a wire back in 1992. The FBI internal affairs investigation, which typically involves dozens of interviews and lasts a few months, reportedly comes down to statements by Agent John Anticev, Det. Lou Napoli, and Dunbar. Floyd appeals, but is ultimately given a “two-week hit.” The agent who had recruited arguably the most important intelligence asset in the recent history of the New York office is forced to surrender her badge and gun and is put on the street for fourteen days.
Floyd
117• August 1999 (page 385)
Assigned to work on terrorism issues full-time for the FDNY, Ronnie Bucca learns that Ahmed Amin Refai, the Egyptian-American accountant with the FDNY, has submitted a false report for a lost ID. The second ID would have allowed access to fire department headquarters. After learning that Refai has told multiple lies to law enforcement officers relating to the “lost” ID, Bucca begins investigating. He learns that Refai has made frequent trips to Egypt (on a $35,000 salary) and had obtained the blueprints of the WTC prior to the bombing in 1993.
Bucca
Refai
118 • August 1999 (page 390)
Bucca, who believes Refai is a potential al Qaeda mole inside the FDNY, later discovers TV news footage showing Refai (left) acting as Sheikh Rahman's personal bodyguard. Bucca turns over the file on the accountant to the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force, but the Bureau takes no action.
119 • January 5, 2000 (page 396)
The CIA gets advance notice of a meeting in Kuala Lumpur attended by two young Saudi veterans of the Chechen campaign: Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. They had met previously in Hamburg with Mohammed Atta. Malaysian authorities take surveillance photos.
The meeting, which turns out to be a key planning session for the 9/11 attacks, is also attended by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his No. 2, Ramzi Binalshibh. Also present is Riduan Ismuddin (aka Hambali), a board member of the Konsonjaya front company in Malaysia that bankrolled Yousef's Bojinka and pope plots as well as this third plot. The meeting is held at the same condo that will later play host to Zacarias Moussaoui, the French national later dubbed “the twentieth hijacker.”
al-Midhar
al-Hazmi
Mohammed
Binalshibh
Hambali
Moussaoui
If there was ever a time for the U.S. intelligence agencies to share the intel, it was now. But it takes the CIA more than a year and a half to inform the FBI that al-Midhar has multiple U.S. entry visas. Al-Midhar and al-Hazmi aren't put on a Watch List until the late summer of 2001, when they are already in the United States and finalizing plans for their roles as hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which hits the Pentagon on September 11. This staggering misstep was the result of the same “need-to-know” mentality that caused the FBI to exclude capable local law enforcement officers like Ronnie Bucca from the Joint Terrorist Task Force.
120 • September 2000 (page 397)
On the 20th anniversary of the JTTF, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White celebrates with Task Force members at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the WTC's North Tower. Citing “the close to absolutely perfect record of successful investigations and convictions,” White notes that in her seven years in the Southern District of New York she has put away twenty-five Islamic terrorists, including Ramzi Yousef and Sheikh Rahman. But in treating Osama bin Laden's jihad as a series of legal cases rather than a global threat to U.S. security, the Feds have made a serious miscalculation. Now, as they party, Ramzi Yousef's extended family of Islamic radicals begins finalizing a plot to take down the very building where the JTTF members are celebrating.
Kallstrom (l.); White (c.)
121 • September 2000 (page 398)*
If the Feds ever needed a reminder of al Qaeda's ongoing threat and the importance of Sheikh Rahman to Osama bin Laden, they get it a few days later, when the Saudi billionaire issues another video fetwa.
Wearing a dagger, surrounded by al Qaeda's Egyptian leaders Mohammed Atef and Dr. Aymen al-Zawahiri as well as Refa'i Taha Musa, the head of the IG, bin Laden sits next to Rahman's son, who calles on jihadis to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood.” Bin Laden also tells his followers to remember El Sayyid Nosair, the man who spilled al Qaeda's first blood in New York in 1990 with the murder of Rabbi Kahane.
While many intelligence analysts continue to link Iraq with the WTC bombing, it is clear by now that al Qaeda's leadership under bin Laden is dominated by Egyptian radicals. Expelled from Sudan since 1996, the Saudi billionaire now operates from Afghanistan. As is often the case, his fatwa is a precursor of violence to come.
Rahman
bin Laden
Atef
al-Zawahiri
Taha Musa
Nosair
122 • October 12, 2000 (page 399)
On the morning of October 12, two al Qaeda suicide bombers load a device made of C-4 explosive into a small skiff and take off across the harbor in Aden, Yemen. The U.S.S. Cole, an advanced guided missile destroyer, is at the refueling dock. As the skiff approaches the ship, the juhadis smile and wave at Cole crew members, who wave back. Then, when the white fiberglass boat pulls alongside, the bomb detonates, blowing a four-story hole in the side of the ship. The two bombers and seventeen U.S. sailors are killed.
Tawfig bin-Atash, a coconspirator in the bombing, had attended the January 5, 2000, Kuala Lumpur meeting where the 9/11 attacks were planned.
John O'Neill, the FBI's chief bin Laden specialist, arrives in Yemen with three hundred agents determined to break the case, but he runs afoul of U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who demands a much lower Bureau profile. The career diplomat goes so far as to block O'Nellia‘ return visa to Yemen after he files to the United States.
Assistant FBI Director Dale Watson, the man who downplayed the U.S. al Qaeda presence before Congress, later tells the Washington Post that “sustained cooperation” with the Yemeni government “has enabled the FBI to further reduce its in-country presence.” The same day, Yemen's prime minister tells the Post that no link has been established between the Cole bombers and al Qaeda.
Bodine
Watson
O'Neill
The FAA issues the first of fifteen advisories warning that terrorists might try to hijack or destroy American aircraft. On January 24, Italian authorities record an Islamic imam discussing fake IDs for “the brothers going to America”.
124 • January 30, 2001 (page 401)
Ziad Samir Jarrah, a Lebanese national, is stopped for questioning in the United Arab Emirates. The CIA reportedly requests that he be interrogated, but the Agency later denies that. Like Yasin, the Iraqi who was let go by the FBI after the WTC bombing, and Wadih EI-Hage, released by the Bureau piror to the African embassy bombings, Jarrah is set free. The FBI later concludes that he was the hijacker-pilot aboard United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11.
Jarrah
125 • February 2001 (page 401)
Hani Hanjour, studying at Arizona flight schools since 1996, begins training on flight simulators. FBI agent Ken Williams, who has transferred out of counterterrorism, apparently misses Hanjour's presence. But the FAA is informed of “concerns” of Pan Am Internatinal Flight Academy instructors that Hanjour lacks the English skills to fly multiengine jets. The FAA reportedly responds by offering to provide an interpreter for Hanjour, who goes on to fly American Flight 77 into the Pentagon on 9/11.
Hanjour
Williams
126 • February 23, 2001 (page 402)
Zacarias Moussaouiarrives at Chicago's O'Hare Airport using a French passport with a ninety-day visa. The previous fall he had enrolled at Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, but proved such a disastrous pilot candidate that he was later grounded. The Feds might have been alerted to Moussaoui if they'd picked up on testimony at the ongoing New York trial (in absentia) of Osama bin Laden, in which the billionaire's ex-pilot discusses his former co-pilot's training at Airman Flight School.
Moussaoui
In April, the U.S. intelligence community learns from a source with terriorist connections that Osama bin Laden is intersted in using commercial pilots in future attacks. The source says that law enforcement investigators should consider the possibility of “spectacular and traumatic” attacks akin to the first WTC bombing. No time frame for an upcoming attack is mentioned, and because the source is determined to be speculating, the information is not disseminated to U.S. intelligence agencies.
bin Laden
AI Qaeda cells are raided in Milan, Frankfurt, and London. The FBI's John O'Neill is quoted as saying, “al Qaeda cells are everywhere.” By April 18, the FAA warns that Middle Eastern terrorists might try and hijack or blow up a U.S. plane. Air carriers are told to “demonstrate a high degree of alertness”.
O'Neill
In early May, the Visa Express program begins in Saudi Arabia, making it easier for Saudi nationals to get U.S. travel permits. Five of the 9/11 hijackers take advantages of the program, including Khalid al-Midhar, who attended the January 2000 Malaysian meeting. Meanwhile, on May 1, al-Midhar's partner Nawaf al-Hazmi, already in the United States, reports an attempted street robbery to Fairfax, VA, police. He declines to press charges, and since his name is not yet on the Watch List, he escapes scrutiny.
al-Midhar
al-Hazmi
130 • May 2001 (page 402)
In May, apparently in urgent need of additional flight training, Zacarias Moussaoui travels to Minneota, where Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's No. 2 in the 9/11 plot, wires him $14,000 for simulator training.
Moussaoui
Hanjour
By June the FBI, citing security threats, pulls its agents out of Yemen, severely curtailing the probe into the Cole bombing. At the same time, Hani Hanjour signs up for a month of flight simulator training at Sawyer School of Aviation in Phoenix. He will soon train almost side by side with Lotfi Raissi, the Algerian pilot whom ex-FBI intelligence asset Harry Ellen said he warned his control agent (Ken Williams) about in the fall of 1996.
Ellen
132 • June 22, 2001 (page 405)
The U.S. Central and European Command imposes “Force Protection Condition Delta” out of concern that a terrorist attack is being mounted. The same day, “chatter” regarding potential attacks causes the Pentagon to pull U.S. Navy ships out of Bahrain. Four days later, the State Department issues a worldwide caution warning American citizens of possible attacks. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice later reports that there was a “threat spike” at the time focusing on Americans or U.S. targets overseas.
Rice
Terrorism czar Richard Clark calls a White House meeting with officials from the FBI, FAA, Coast Guard, Secret Service, and INS warning that “something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon.” The next day, Clarke chairs a meeting of the National Security Council's Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG) and orders a suspension of all nonessential travel by the staff.
134 • July 10, 2001 (page 406)
FBI agent Ken Williams sends a memo to FBI Headquarters. He reportedly identifies eight Middle Eastern men studying at Arizona flight schools and urges the Bureau to do background checks. The communiqué, which will go down in history as the “Phoenix memo,” is also sent to agents in the FBI's New York office, the Bureau's office of origin for all bin Laden-related terrorism cases. At least three people in the office see the memo, but no action is taken.
Williams
135 • August 2001 (page 408)
By now, Ronnie Bucca is so concerned about the threat intelligence he's picking up through his reserve unit that he's putting his family through alert drills. For years, as Ronnie left for work, his wife, Eve, had slipped little notes in his pocket for him to discover later in the day--notes that read “I love you” or “Stay safe.” Now Eve's notes read “Watch yourself.”
136 • August 6, 2001 (page 412)
In his daily briefing, President George W. Bush, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, gets a top-secret report warning of potential hijackings reportedly entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” More alarming, the briefing reportedly contains a reference to a British intelligence report that hijackers might grab an airliner in an effort to free Sheikh Rahman.
137 • August 15, 2001 (page 396, 411)
Few lapses in the days before 9/11 equal the FBI's blunder when alert agents in the Minneapolis field office make an application for a FISA search warrant on Zacarias Moussaoui after the French would-be pilot is arrested on visa violations. Questions were raised after he tried to rush his flight training and asked instructors how much damage a hijacker could do with a fully loaded 747.
138 • August 23, 2001 (page 410)
John O'Neill, just retired from the FBI, starts work as head of WTC security. That same day, the CIA finally warns the FBI that al-Midhar and al-Hazmi, photographed in Malaysia in 2000, are now in the country. If the FAA had been alerted, they might have picked up the two hijackers in the reservations system: the Saudis were so audacious they'd bought their 9/11 tickets in their own names. But nobody at the FBI in Washington seems to connect al-Midhar and al-Hazmi to the escalating hijack threat, even though the same unit got the Phoenix memo.
O'Neill
When FBI Headquarters refuses the FISA request, a Minneapolis agent E-mails headquarters warning that Moussaoui might be “involved in a larger plot to target airlines.” But a headquarters agent complains that the Minneapolis office is getting people “spun up” over Moussaoui. The office replies that they are trying to make sure Moussaoui “did not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center.” An amazingly prescient warning, coming just a month before 9/11.
140 • August 29, 2001 (page 412)
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed gives the final “go” for the attacks, but Mohammed Atta chooses the date. In a coded phone call to Ramzi Binalshibh he describes “two sticks, a dash and a cake with a stick down” the right side: 11-9, or September 11.
Mohammed
Atta
141 • September 10, 2001 (page 413)*
The final fatal irony underscoring the Justice Department's approach to terrorism comes on September 10. Despite all the warnings throughout the year, when the FBI asks Attorney General John Ashcroft for an increase of $58 million in its counterterrorism budget, he turns them down. Acting FBI Director Tom Picard is later quoted as saying, “Before September, 11, I couldn't get half an hour on terrorism with Ashcroft. He was only interested in three things: guns, drugs and civil rights.”
Ashcroft
142 • September 11, 2001 (page 414)
8:43 a.m. mohammed atta and the hijackers aboard american flight 11 hit wtc tower 1
9:03 A.M. As if he's been waiting for the attacks for eight years, Ronnie Bucca responds immediately with Supervising Fire Marshal Jimmy Devery. They arrive on Liberty Street at the base of the South Tower when suddenly...
Marwan al-shehhi and the hijackers aboard united flight 175 slam into wtc tower 2
Bucca, who knows the Towers like the house he grew up in, leads Devery up a stairwell in the South Tower. When they get to the 51st floor, Devery runs into Ling Young, a badly burned victim. As he takes her down to safety, Bucca races up to the fire floor, 78. There, with Battalion Chief Orio Palmer, he finds water pressure and begins fighting the blaze with a standpipe hose. Meanwhile...
Hani Hanjour and the hijackers aboard American Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon.
143 • September 11, 2001 (page 417)
10:05 A.M. As Devery tries to return to Bucca in Tower Two, he becomes disoriented and enters the North Tower. He is crossing over to West Street when suddenly the South Tower collapses. Ronnie Bucca, the one man who saw it all coming years before, dies as a firefighter beating back the flames. Ironically, John O'Neill, another prophet who warned of future al Qaeda attacks, also perishes in the collapse.
Bucca
10:10 A.M. One hijacker short after Moussaoui's arrest, United Flight 93 is the only one of the four flights to miss its target.
Ziad Jarrah and the hijackers aboard United Flight 93 crash in Pennsylvania.
10:28 A.M. Devery, who escaped the first collapse, is now engulfed in a dark black cloud. Around him he begins to hear the PASS alarms of fallen firefighters. Somehow making it through the debris, he finds a group of fire marshals. Half in shock and not realizing the extent of the devastation, Devery exhorts them to go back for Ronnie. But one of the marshals pulls him aside and tells him that Ronnie Bucca is gone.
144 • September 29, 2001 (page 12)
Special Agent Nancy Floyd, who watched the 9/11 attacks from the George Washington Bridge, transfers to a small FBI regional office in the far west. A month before September 11, Emad Salem, her old asset, tries to contact her, but she has long since been forbidden from communicating with him.
Floyd
145 • October 2001 (page 424)
A month later, Ronnie Bucca's body is recovered from the "pile" where the Tower once stood. When his widow, Eve, is able to bring herself to clean out his Manhattan Base locker, she finds a file that Ronnie kept of his ongoing investigation of Ramzi Yousef and Islamic terrorists. Inside she finds the report on the Egyptian accountant Ahmed Refai, who Ronnie believed had compromised FDNY security.
Bucca
April 4, 2003 (page 9)
On 9/11, Ramzi Yousef watches the execution of his 1994 third plot from a 10- by 13-foot cell in the Supermax prison in Colorado. Within hours of the attacks FBI agents try to question him, but Yousef refuses to talk. He's then moved to another cell without a radio or TV. On April 4, 2003, he loses the appeal of his 240-year sentence.
Yousef and his Supermax cell
One of Yousef’s Casio timers later seized by the Philippine National Police during a search of Room 603 at the Dona Josefa Apartments.
Once the timer was set, Yousef got up and went back to seat 26K. When he was sure nobody was watching, he took the shaving kit bomb and shoved it into the pouch below the seat next to the life jacket.
The 747 touched down at the airport in Cebu City at 6:25 a.m.
Yousef had already prepared his alibi. With luck he’d be on his way back to Manila by the time the bomb went off. He exited the plane and quickly went to a ticket counter, paying cash for the next outbound flight. He would arrive back before noon, rush to the Dona Josefa, sneak up the back fire stairs to Room 603, and then casually emerge for the day around 1:00 p.m.
The downstairs guard, Roman Mariano, kept a logbook of the tenants’ comings and goings. Naji Haddad, the Moroccan engineer in Room 603, had come in the night before around 9:40 p.m., and as far as the guard knew, he hadn’t left since.18
But back in Cebu, as Yousef rushed across the airport terminal to make the next flight out, Haruki Ikegami, a soft-spoken twenty-four-year-old Japanese engineer, had just made it through the metal detector. The gate attendant checked his ticket. He would be sitting in seat 26K when the second leg of Flight 434 took off for Narita. The gate attendant smiled and wished him a good flight. Ikegami bowed politely, anxious to get home.
Mayday! Mayday!
Ramzi Yousef was already in the air when the continuation of PAL Flight 434 took off for Japan. This time the plane was three-quarters full, with 273 passengers and a crew of 20. When the seat belt sign went off, Haruki Ikegami dropped his seat back and closed his eyes.
It was just after 10:44 a.m. PAL Flight 434 was back at 33,000 feet, heading north over the Philippine Sea. The 747 was approaching reporting point “Mike Delta,” the tiny island of Minamidaito, forty nautical miles south of Okinawa.19 Captain Reyes was about to contact the controller at Naha Airport on the southern tip of the island to give him his bearings.
Now, in the life jacket pouch below Haruki Ikegami’s seat, the seconds counted down. At precisely 10:45 a.m. the alarm went off, sending a low-voltage surge through the SCR. In a millisecond, power coursed across the fusing circuit through the batteries, creating a charge designed to light up the nine-volt bulb. But the broken glass caused the filament to short out and spark, setting off the gun cotton and detonating the container of nitroglycerine.
The blast blew a hole in the 747’s floor. In the cockpit, the crew members were jolted from their seats. The enormous aircraft suddenly banked to the right.
Captain Reyes jumped on the radio: “Mayday! Mayday! This is PAL four-three-four—explosion on board—request emergency landing.” The Naha controller asked Reyes if he had control of the aircraft, Reyes told him they were on autopilot. The 747 had pulled right and was back on course. At that point he disengaged and attempted to fly the plane manually. Pushing forward on the controls, he was able to get the nose dipped slightly, but was unable to turn the plane.
“Cannot turn,” said Reyes, staying calm. “The hydraulics may have been severed.”
He instructed his copilot to use the heading selector, but the plane still wouldn’t change course, so he switched back to autopilot. Just then, the purser came into the cockpit and reported that a passenger had been killed—the Japanese man in seat 26K. In the smoke-filled cabin, the wall, ceiling, and seats around row 26 were covered in blood. Fernando Bayot, a flight steward, had rushed toward the blast point moments after the bomb detonated. He found the upper half of Haruki Ikegami’s body protruding from a hole below the twenty-sixth row. In the smoke, Bayot couldn’t tell whether the passenger was alive or dead, so he tried to pull him up. When the torso wouldn’t budge, he called for another attendant to help them. When they tugged again they realized the young Japanese man was dead; his body had been severed by the blast.
Back in the cockpit, Reyes thought quickly about his next move.
Given the position of the bomb, he wasn’t sure if he was leaking fuel or if a spark from the controls could set off a secondary explosion. But he had to get the plane down. So he held his breath, counted “one, two, three,” then disengaged the autopilot again. This time he was able to turn the aircraft.
It took the captain forty-five minutes to ease the jumbo jet onto a proper approach to Naha Airport in Okinawa.
“That was the longest forty-five minutes in my life,” steward Bayot later recalled.20
Finally, as PAL Flight 434 made its approach to Naha, a convoy of fire trucks and emergency vehicles raced onto the runway.
Still airborne, Reyes’s next worry was whether or not the hydraulic damage would allow him to lock the landing gear. As he approached the Naha tower for a fly-by, the controllers did a visual inspection, but they couldn’t be sure if the gear was down, so a nearby private Lear jet made two passes below the 747 and confirmed by radio: “A.O.K. Gear down and locked.”
Moments later, as the 747’s tires kissed the tarmac, a cheer went up from the surviving passengers in the cabin.
That night, a different kind of celebration took place in the shadows of the Firehouse Karaoke Bar along Roxas Boulevard in the Manila suburb of Pasay City. As a CNN report on the PAL explosion flashed across a TV over the bar, Yousef and his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed clicked glasses. His calculation for the bomb placement had been just inches short. The explosion had miraculously missed the 747’s center fuel tank, which was located just below the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth rows.
If he’d planted the device slightly forward, under a seat in row 25, the tank, with its jet fuel and vapors, might have ruptured, blowing the 747 out of the sky.
The experiment had failed to bring down Flight 434, but to Yousef it was cause for celebration. By designing and wet-testing the first undetectable airline bomb, he’d achieved a giant leap forward in the history of modern terrorism. The foot soldiers of al Qaeda now had a device that, if properly placed, could bring down a jumbo jet anyplace in the world. It was just a matter of assembling the pieces on board and setting the timer.
As they eyed the CNN footage of the wreckage inside the cabin of PAL Flight 434, Yousef smiled. “Imagine this times twelve,” he said, clicking glasses with his uncle again. “To Bojinka.”
“Bojinka,” said Mohammed. “As Allah wills it, so it will be done.”