I remember having a phone argument with an ex that day because he was all “CARPET BOMB AFGHANISTAN” and I thought that was hideously morally reprehensible.
So we were pretty sure it was Afghanistan we’d be looking to glass, that was sometime in the afternoon.
In his book Against All Enemies, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote that his folks had determined it was al-Qaeda by the time the second plane hit. Within hours, the FBI had identified each of the hijackers and linked them to Bin Laden, based on information already in their intelligence files.
The ties to Bin Laden were widely reported on television by the afternoon of 9/11 and in every newspaper the next morning, although most did not use the name “al qaeda” but simply said “bin laden’s terror network.” The first attribution to Al Qaeda in the NY Times came in an article on 9/14.
The FBI released the names and background info on each of the hijackers on 9/13.
I remember reading an article about how someone claimed a middle eastern person laid out the concept of just how several modern jet airliners could be hijacked at the same time and then be forced to crash just like what happened on 9-11. The differenence was that initially the plan was to crash them into the ocean. So it would be a terrorist attack against the American and/or European public.
Does anyone know or remember just who it was that explained this plan? As I recall this occurred 2 or 3 years before 2001.
I don’t remember if the person who explained it did so on TV or in a book or some other kind of interview. Would anyone else remember?
They explained how 5 or 6 people would be required to hijack each plane and IIRC, they then explained that this would be done with something like ten airplanes and they would all rendezvous over the Atlantic ocean (or somewhere else) and then they would all be forced to crash into the ocean. This was prior to them having the idea they would all crash into the WTC or govt targets.
The CIA field commander in Afghanistan writes that the first US team entered Afghanistan on 9/26, in what was dubbed Operation Jawbreaker. They met with Northern Alliance leaders, mapped the location of Taliban targets, and converted an old British landing strip so that it could accommodate US supply flights. All of this was to prepare for the arrival of special forces teams.
According to him, the first US military personnel arrived on October 19, a team from the 5th Special Forces Group.
The CIA guy is named Gary Berntsen and his book was called Jawbreaker. Great read, if this sort of thing interests you.
It was in 1995, and it was called the Bojinka plot. Part of the plan also included the assassination of Pope John Paul II.
The plot was uncovered after a fire in the apartment of one of the participants revealed documents of their plans. One of the planners, Ramzi Yousef, was arrested a month later in Pakistan and extradited to the US. The other planner was Yousef’s uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who later masterminded the 9-11 attacks.
Wow! I am amazed that you remembered that or knew that.
Sometimes I daydream that after seeing that I could have gone to a NYC street corner and handed out pamphlets or flyers warning the citizens of NYC about this danger.
But I guess that at a minimum I would have gotten beaten by the police and at a maximum I would have been arrested for causing a public disturbance. Still if only a handful of people would have taken that warning seriously, it might have made a real difference.
Isn’t it just maddening that the information was laid right out but no one would take it seriously enough to do anything about it?
I think about that sometimes. I’d really like to know why people don’t seem to be outraged that plan was made public in the way it was and yet it was just ignored.
Baffling.
Get New Yorkers to do what? Evacuate Manhattan en masse?
Not really, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it at all.