APPENDIX B PRESIDENT CLINTON FOREIGN POLICY CHRONOLOGY, 1993–2001

1993

February 26: In New York, the World Trade Center is bombed by Islamic terrorists. A car bomb planted in an underground garage kills six people and leaves one thousand injured. Investigators believe the mastermind of the attack, Ramzi Yousef, is financially connected to Osama bin Laden.
April 12: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) air forces begin enforcing the UN-mandated no-fly zone over Bosnia, involving sixty U.S., French, and Dutch warplanes.
April 9–18: In Iraq, U.S. planes bomb Iraqi antiaircraft sites that had tracked and attacked U.S. aircraft.
April 13: U.S. forces in association with NATO enforce the ban on all unauthorized military flights over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
May 4: In Somalia, Operation Restore Hope is replaced by the United Nations Security Council operation UNOSOM II (United Nations Operation in Somalia), with enforcement powers and a mandate to disarm warring factions, in accordance with the Addis Ababa agreements of January 1993. Out of 22,700 multinational troops and logistics personnel, up to 2,900 are U.S. forces, primarily combat support personnel assigned to the UN Logistics Support Command. Restore Hope was established under United States command in December 1992 to establish a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations. Some 25,800 U.S. military forces were included among the 37,000 peacekeepers.
June 19: U.S. aircraft fire on an Iraqi antiaircraft site displaying hostile intent.
June 26: The United States attacks the Iraqi Intelligence Service Headquarters in Baghdad, launching twenty-three Tomahawk Cruise Missiles in retaliation for an attempted assassination of the former U.S. president George Bush while he visited Kuwait two months earlier. The assassination plot was hatched by Iraqi agents.
July 9: UN protection forces, including 350 U.S. soldiers, are deployed to participate in the UN protection for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
August 3: An Army Ranger task force of more than 1,100 soldiers is deployed to Somalia as a “quick reaction force.”
August 31: The Oslo Accords are agreed to by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization during secret talks in Norway. After forty-five years of conflict, the two agree to recognize each other. Within days, Yasser Arafat signs a letter recognizing Israel and renouncing violence.
September 13: The Oslo Accords are signed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders at a White House ceremony.
October 3: In Somalia, eighteen American soldiers are killed in a Mogadishu firefight with irregular forces loyal to warlord Mohammed Aidid. Some 500 to 1,000 of Aidid’s fighters are killed by U.S. troops.
October 7: President Clinton announces that the United States will withdraw all combat forces and most logistics units from Somalia by March 31, 1994.

1994

January 6: President Clinton labels three types of satellites as “civilian,” thus circumventing sanctions on China in order to allow exports to proceed.
January 12: Under media pressure, President Clinton asks that a special prosecutor be named to investigate the Whitewater scandal. A week later, Attorney General Janet Reno names Robert Fiske as special prosecutor.
February 28: U.S. military aircraft under NATO shoot down four Serbian Galeb planes in the former Yugoslavia while patrolling the no-fly zone.
April 10–11: NATO-led U.S. warplanes strike Bosnian Serb forces in Gorazde.
April 12: U.S. combat-equipped forces are deployed to Burundi to assist with the evacuation of U.S. embassy personnel and other citizens from Rwanda.
May 4: In Cairo, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat sign the Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area, formally setting terms for the withdrawal of Israeli military forces.
May 6: Paula Jones files a sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton.
June 3: President Clinton issues Executive Order 12919, on “National Defense Industrial Resources Preparedness,” which consolidates previous executive orders to give the executive branch sweeping powers for emergency control of food resources, farm equipment and commercial fertilizer, health resources, all forms of civil transportation, water resources, construction material, and labor supply. The order gives the director of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) a key role in developing and implementing the policy. Critics claim this order is extraconstitutional in scope and could grant a president virtually dictatorial powers.
July 13: President Clinton issues presidential waivers under P.L. 101-246 to allow U.S. satellites to be launched from Chinese rockets.
July 22: In Rwanda, U.S. forces begin a three-month intervention to assist nongovernmental and international organizations to provide relief to refugees of the civil war and to assist with the deployment of UN peacekeeping troops. By mid-August, U.S. troops participating at the peak of the mission total 3,600, with most deployed outside of Rwanda.
August 5: U.S. aircraft, operating under NATO and acting upon requests of UN protective forces, attack Bosnian Serb heavy weapons in Sarajevo’s heavy-weapons exclusion zone.
September 19: Some 20,000 U.S. forces enter Haiti under code name Operation Uphold Democracy, as the lead force in the multinational operation to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.
October 15: President Clinton lifts sanctions he had imposed on China for selling missile technology to Pakistan.
November 1: A newly operational Afghan militant force, called the Taliban, created by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence Agency around Islamic schools, or madrasas, and funded with Saudi Arabian resources, emerges from northwest Pakistan and captures Kandahar, the Pashtun tribal center in southeastern Afghanistan.
November 1: President Clinton issues a waiver on sanctions on China for missile-technology exports.
November 10: Iraq accepts the UN-designated land border with Kuwait as well as Kuwaiti sovereignty as confirmed by UN Security Council Resolution 833.
November 19: The UN Security Council approves Resolution 958, which authorizes the use of air power to support the UN Protection Force in Croatia.
December 12: China reportedly begins to transfer ring magnets to an unsafely guarded nuclear facility in Pakistan. This violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and contravenes U.S. laws that require sanctions.
December 22: President Clinton announces that the U.S. Army peacekeeping force in Macedonia will be replaced by five hundred soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division.

1995

January 9: Bernard Schwartz, chairman of Loral Space and Communications Corporation, signs a letter to the president advocating the shift of satellite export responsibility from the Department of State to the Department of Commerce.
February 27: In Somalia, some 1,800 U.S. combat forces arrive in Mogadishu to assist with the removal of the United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM II) peacekeeping operation.
March 3: The UNOSOM II international peacekeeping force is withdrawn from Somalia, in the midst of continuing instability.
March 8: Three unidentified gunmen kill two U.S. diplomats and wound a third in Karachi, Pakistan.
March 31: The U.S.-led peace operation in Haiti gives way to a United Nations peacekeeping operation, called the UN Mission in Haiti, or UNMH.
April 19: In Oklahoma City, a terrorist attack on the federal building by American extremists kills 168 and wounds hundreds more.
May 3: President Clinton issues Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD-25), in secretive classified form. The directive outlines U.S. roles in UN-authorized and other international “peacekeeping” activities. The document, which effects the deployment of U.S. military forces into hostile zones, is denied to the public and to the U.S. Congress, which has constitutional responsibility to approve military deployments. The directive calls for the elimination of the War Powers Act provision requiring withdrawal of U.S. troops within sixty days, without congressional approval. That provision is not addressed by Congress.
June 3: NATO and other European Union countries agree to plans for a rapid-reaction force of up to 10,000 troops to protect UN peacekeepers in Bosnia. The United States offers to provide air support, intelligence, transport, and other equipment, and rules out ground troops.
June 8: A U.S. Marine search-and-rescue team successfully rescues Captain Scott O’Grady of the U.S. Air Force, shot down by a Bosnian Serb missile and stranded in Bosnia for six days.
June 25: In Haiti, first-round parliamentary and municipal elections are held. Although deadly violence does not occur, election observers state that there are numerous irregularities, including ballot burning in some locations.
August 8: Two of Saddam Hussein’s sons-in-law, both key aides, defect and are granted political asylum abroad. One of the defectors, Hussein Kamel, is the principal architect of Iraq’s programs of mass-destruction weapons and claims that Saddam intends to invade Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
August 30: NATO begins a campaign of massive air strikes against Bosnian Serb military targets around Sarajevo under Operation Deliberate Force, which lasts for around one month.
September 28: The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank is signed in Washington. Following the signing, President Clinton hosts a summit attended by Jordan’s King Hussein, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat.
October 9: After long debate within the administration, in which the Defense Department, CIA, and State Department oppose American satellites’ being launched on Chinese rockets, President Clinton initials a classified order maintaining the State Department’s authority over the Commerce Department on such launchings.
November 1: In Dayton, Ohio, “proximity peace talks” begin between the United States and other contact group countries to resolve the Balkan conflict.
November 4: Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated in Tel Aviv by an Israeli university student.
November 13: A bomb hidden in a van explodes at the U.S. military headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing seven, including five Americans.
November 21: The Dayton Peace Accords are signed to end the Balkan conflict.
December 17: Presidential elections are held in Haiti. Although former president Aristide is not permitted to run, his protégé, René Préval, wins with 89 percent of the votes cast. The vote is marred by only a 28 percent voter turnout and by the boycott of the election by many parties.

1996

February 6: President Clinton issues a waiver to lift sanctions and permit four satellites, including a Loral product, to be launched on Chinese rockets despite the January reports that China continues to export nuclear technology to Pakistan. On the same day, Clinton’s friend—and Chinese Triad mafia member—Charlie Trie attends a White House coffee with Wang Jun, China’s top military-industrial arms dealer, who had a multibillion-dollar stake in getting access to American satellites.
February 14: On liftoff, the Chinese launch of its Long March rocket fails, killing several people and destroying a $126 million U.S. satellite belonging to Loral Space and Communications Corp.
March 10–11: The United States deploys two carrier battle groups to the waters off Taiwan, calling China’s live-fire exercises, intended to intimidate Taiwan, “reckless” and “risky.”
March 14: The Clinton administration announces a decision to move a commercial communications satellite from the Munitions List to the Commerce Control List of dual-use items. The export license is moved from the Department of State to the Department of Commerce.
April 5: The Los Angeles Times reports that the Clinton administration tacitly approved a shipment of Iranian arms to the Bosnian government in 1994.
April 9: President Clinton orders U.S. military forces to Liberia to evacuate “private U.S. citizens and certain third-country nationals who had taken refuge in the U.S. Embassy compound” because of the “deterioration of the security situation and the resulting threat to American citizens.”
May 10: Loral completes an engineering report that instructs China how to improve its faulty rockets and missiles, including solving fatal problems in guidance systems. This assistance enhances the ability of Chinese ICBMs to hit American cities with precision.
May 10: Loral’s commission studying the failure of China’s Long March missile launch completes a preliminary review that is shared with China, finding that the cause of the accident was an electrical flaw in the electronic flight-control system. The report allegedly discusses weaknesses in the Chinese rocket’s guidance-and-control systems.
May 10: Sudan expels Osama bin Laden because of international pressure applied by the United States and Saudi Arabia. He returns to Afghanistan.
May 20: President Clinton reports to Congress the continual deployment of U.S. military forces to evacuate the U.S. embassy in Liberia and to respond to the various isolated “attacks on the American Embassy complex.”
May 23: President Clinton reports to Congress the deployment of U.S. military personnel to evacuate “private citizens and certain U.S. government employees,” and to provide “enhanced security for the American Embassy in Bangui” in the Central African Republic.
May 23: The Clinton administration announces that China will not be sanctioned for transferring the ring magnets to Pakistan, saying that there is no evidence that the Chinese government (as opposed to a state-owned company) has “willfully aided or abetted” Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.
June 1: In Hong Kong, Clinton donor Johnny Chung meets China Aerospace Corp. executive Liu Chaoying, a lieutenant colonel in the People’s Liberation Army who attended counterintelligence school. Her company builds satellites and rockets and provides equipment for China’s nuclear tests. The company also owns China Great Wall Industry Corp., which had been sanctioned by the United States in 1991 and 1993 for selling missiles to Pakistan.
June 23: President Clinton waives sanctions under P.L. 101-246 for the Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications (APMT) satellite to be exported for launch from China.
June 25: Khobar Towers, a military housing facility in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, is attacked as a fuel truck carrying a bomb explodes, killing nineteen U.S. military personnel and wounding 515 more. Several groups claim responsibility for the attack.
July 9: President Clinton waives sanctions under P.L. 101-246, allowing the Globalstar satellite to be exported for launch from China.
July 19–26: Liu Chaoying, a Chinese aerospace executive, arrives in the United States and at the home of Democratic fundraiser Eli Broad, and subsequently shakes President Clinton’s hand for a picture taken with him. Liu and Johnny Chung incorporate Marswell Investment, Inc., similar to a Hong Kong company that is a front for the political department of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Deposits to Marswell accounts reportedly travel from the PLA to U.S. Democratic Party causes.
August 23: Osama bin Laden issues a Declaration of Jihad, or religious war, against the United States, and calls for support of Islamic revolutionary groups around the world.
September 3–4: U.S. forces launch forty-four cruise missiles at military targets in southern Iraq. President Clinton announces the widening of the no-fly zones.
September 27: The Taliban movement captures Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, and gains control of 90 percent of the country. The mostly Pashtun tribal Taliban are resisted in northern Afghanistan primarily by Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara ethnic groups. The Clinton administration hopes the Taliban will bring stability to Afghanistan.
December 20: The NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) peacekeeping mission ends in Bosnia, and the UN-mandated Stabilization Force (SFOR) mission begins. The 54,000 troops of IFOR—which include 16,200 U.S. troops in Bosnia and some 6,000 support personnel stationed in the region—are replaced by just 18,000 SFOR troops. The U.S. contingent is reduced to 3,600 troops in Bosnia and an additional 1,000 personnel stationed in neighboring countries to participate in NATO operations in the Balkans.

1997

February 23: As punishment against the “enemies” of Palestine, a Palestinian gunman opens fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building in New York City. One person is killed and six others are wounded before he turns the gun on himself.
March 13: President Clinton utilizes U.S. military forces to evacuate certain U.S. government employees and private American citizens from Tirana, Albania, and to enhance security for the U.S. embassy in that city.
March 25: U.S. military forces deploy to Congo and Gabon for a standby evacuation of Americans from Zaire.
May 15: President Clinton issues the secret Presidential Decision Directive 56 (PDD-56), “The Clinton Administration Policy on Managing Complex Contingency Operations,” which purportedly guides the policy for PDD-25 on the U.S. role in international peacekeeping operations. A controversial feature of the directive is that UN-associated nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are given a “voice in the field” through the creation of a “Civilian-Military Operation Center.” The directive also urges the inclusion of the NGOs “in the planning and policymaking circles in Washington.”
May 16: A classified report at the Department of Defense’s Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) concludes that Loral and Hughes Electronics Corp. have transferred expertise to China that significantly enhances the reliability of its nuclear ballistic missiles and that “United States national security has been harmed” (cited in the April 13, 1998, New York Times).
May 29–30: President Clinton orders U.S. military forces deployed to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to prepare for and undertake the evacuation of certain U.S. government employees and private U.S. citizens.
July 5–7: In Cambodia, the former Khmer Rouge co–prime minister stages a coup against the freely elected royalist prime minister, Prince Ranariddh.
September 9: The Department of Justice begins a criminal investigation into allegations that Loral and Hughes illegally passed technical assistance to China.
September 10–12: With the Middle East peace process stalled for more than one year, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright makes her first official trip to the Middle East.
September 26: Representing the administration, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright signs three agreements related to the Anti–Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty at the United Nations. Defense experts criticize the agreements as threatening U.S. national security by reimposing restrictions found in the defunct 1972 ABM Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, including restrictions on a national missile defense system. Although the treaty expired in 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the Clinton administration continues to observe the requirements of the treaty as policy.
November: President Clinton issues the highly classified Presidential Decision Directive 60 (PDD-60), which involves a significant change in U.S. strategic nuclear doctrine by formally abandoning guidelines issued by the Reagan administration in 1981 that the United States must be prepared to fight and win a protracted nuclear war.
December 5: President Clinton issues a “presidential determination” waiving provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 to authorize the reopening of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, D.C.
December 19: Monica Lewinsky is issued a subpoena to appear at a deposition in the Paula Jones suit.

1998

January 26: President Clinton declares publicly, regarding Lewinsky, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
February 23: Bin Laden issues a joint declaration with the Egyptian Islamic group Al Jihad, the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh, and the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan under the banner of the “World Islamic Front,” which states that Muslims should kill Americans, including civilians—anywhere in the world.
April 16–17: The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, visits Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Afghanistan, he asks the Northern Alliance resistance to stop its successful offensive against the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies. He is rebuffed by the Taliban when he asks them to hand over Osama bin Laden. Richardson calls for an end of military supplies to all warring factions, and voices support for a religious clergy conference, or ulama, called for by Pakistan to discuss peace. The arms embargo is largely honored by the Northern Alliance resistance. Pakistan, however, steps up arms supplies to the Taliban and sends in military reinforcements from the army and religious schools. Within a few months, the Taliban and al-Qaeda regain a military advantage and, with support from Pakistani air power, capture most of the Northern Alliance areas of resistance.
June 8: A U.S. grand jury investigation of bin Laden, initiated in 1996, issues a sealed indictment, charging bin Laden with “conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States.” Prosecutors charge that bin Laden heads a terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, “the base,” and is a major financier of Islamic terrorists around the world.
August 6: Monica Lewinsky testifies under immunity to a grand jury.
August 7: U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, are bombed simultaneously, killing 224, including 12 Americans, and injuring more than 5,000. It is determined that Osama bin Laden is responsible for the attacks.
August 17: President Clinton undergoes four hours of questioning before a grand jury. Afterward, he says in a televised speech, “I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate.”
August 20: President Clinton orders synchronized air strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan. In Sudan, the United States strikes a pharmaceutical plant suspected of being a chemical weapons factory. In Afghanistan, cruise missiles strike camps used by the Osama bin Laden terrorist organization after convincing information is found linking the bin Laden organization to the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998.
September 9: Kenneth Starr tells House leaders that he has found “substantial and credible information… that may constitute grounds for an impeachment.”
September 15: Following the Taliban and al-Qaeda capture of Bamiyan, the Hazara tribal stronghold in central Afghanistan, massive atrocities are committed against the civilian population. On Afghanistan’s western border, Iran masses 200,000 troops in response to the Taliban’s northern offensive, which is backed by Pakistan.
September 21: The New York Times reports that, in August, a small group of presidential advisors met with Clinton, reportedly with evidence that bin Laden wished to obtain weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons to use against U.S. installations.
September 23: The UN Security Council adopts Resolution 1199, demanding a cessation of hostilities in Kosovo and warning that “additional measures” to restore peace will be considered.
October 15–23: At the Wye River Conference in Maryland, President Clinton and Secretary Albright broker an intensive conference-ending all-night session between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. The meeting results in the Wye River Memorandum, which is signed at the White House on October 23.
November 13: President Clinton agrees to pay Paula Jones $850,000 to drop her sexual harassment lawsuit.
November 30: President Clinton hosts a Middle East Donors Conference in Washington, at which some forty nations pledge over $3 billion to the Palestinian Authority.
December 11–12: The House Judiciary Committee approves four articles of impeachment against President Clinton, which involve perjury and obstruction of justice in the Jones case.
December 19: President Clinton is impeached; the House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment.
December 20: Polls show that President Clinton’s approval ratings continue to rise.

1999

January 13: The Washington Times reports that President Clinton backed away from an announcement on funding the first part of a deployed national missile defense after U.S. attacks on Iraq prompted Russia to halt its ratification of the START II arms treaty.
February 12: The U.S. Senate votes to acquit President Clinton on both impeachment charges.
March 24: U.S. military forces in coalition with NATO allies commence a seventy-eight-day bombing campaign against Serbia and Serb forces in Kosovo in response to the Yugoslav government’s campaign of violence and repression against the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo.
May 7: NATO airplanes mistakenly bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing seven. China accuses the United States of conducting a deliberate attack.
May 25: The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China (the Cox Commission) releases a three-volume report detailing the transfer of sensitive “dual-use” U.S. military-related technologies to China. The report includes the satellite/rocket-related cases pertaining to the Loral and Hughes companies. “The seriousness of these findings and their enormous significance to our national security,” the commission states, includes theft of some of America’s most sensitive technologies, including nuclear weapons design.
May 27: The Russian Duma adopts a resolution condemning the NATO actions and postpones ratification of the START II treaty.
June 10: NATO suspends bombing in Kosovo after Serb forces begin to withdraw.
June 11–12: Kosovo Forces (KFOR) troops begin entering Kosovo. Russian troops arrive in Pristina three hours before NATO troops arrive in Kosovo.
June 20: Serb forces completely withdraw from Kosovo, which signals NATO to end its bombing campaign in the former Republic of Yugoslavia.
July 14–20: Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak visits the United States for the first time since taking office on July 6. He and President Clinton pledge to make peace a top priority.
July 15: A congressionally mandated Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, led by former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, concludes that “Ballistic missiles armed with WMD [weapons of mass destruction] payloads pose [an immediate] strategic threat to the United States.” The commission’s findings are in stark contrast to the Clinton administration’s definitive 1995 National Intelligence Estimate that there would be “no threat from long-range ballistic missiles for at least 15 years.” The report adds, “The threat to the U.S. posed by these emerging capabilities is broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by the [Clinton administration] Intelligence community.”
July 19: President Clinton reports to Congress that, “consistent with the War Powers Resolution,” about 6,200 U.S. military personnel continue to participate in the NATO-led SFOR operation in Bosnia, and another 2,200 troops will support SFOR from other parts of the region. In addition, U.S. military personnel will remain in Macedonia in support of the international security presence in Kosovo.
November 2: At a ceremony in Oslo commemorating the anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, President Clinton meets with Barak and Arafat, who agree to designate February 13, 2000, as the target for achieving a framework agreement on the permanent status of peace issues.
December 15: President Clinton reports to Congress that, “consistent with the War Powers Resolution,” 8,000 U.S. combat-equipped military personnel will continue to serve as part of the NATO-led KFOR security force in Kosovo. Another 1,500 U.S. troops are deployed in other parts of the region in support roles.

2000

February 25: President Clinton announces that a small number of U.S. military personnel will be assigned as part of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor. The contingent includes three military observers and one judge advocate. The president also assigns a thirty-troop military support group to facilitate and coordinate U.S. military activities on the island.
October 12: In Aden, Yemen, an explosive-laden boat blows up alongside the USS Cole, killing seventeen American sailors. Al-Qaeda operatives and bin Laden are suspected.
November 26: In Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide is elected president again, although the election is boycotted by most of the opposition.
December 18: President Clinton reports to Congress that, “consistent with the War Powers Resolution,” 5,600 U.S. troops remain as part of the NATO-led KFOR security force in Kosovo. Another 500 U.S. support troops are deployed in neighboring Macedonia.

2001

September 11: Terrorists, coordinated by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, attack New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon by flying hijacked American commercial passenger airplanes into the buildings.