From the Gamut: What They Should Have Known

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." -- national security adviser Condoleeza Rice, May 16, 2002

1993
January: Clinton Administration begins.

February 26: A bomb detonates in a lower level of the World Trade Center in New York. Six people are killed and more than a thousand are injured.

1994
June: A report commissioned by the Pentagon concludes that terrorists could hijack commercial airlines and crash them into the Pentagon and the White House.

September 12: Frank Eugene Corder, piloting a stolen Cessna airplane, entered the prohibited airspace around the White House just before 2 a.m. After passing over the Ellipse, he crashed on the lawn just south of the Executive Mansion. The plane struck a tree near the South Portico steps and hit a corner on the first floor of the White House killing Corder.

December 24: An Air France jetliner is hijacked by Algerian terrorists who intend to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. The tower is saved when a SWAT team storms the plane and kills the hijackers.

1995
January: Philippine police find a bomb factory run by Islamic terrorist. One of the men arrested reveals a plan called "Operation Bojinka." Part of that al Qaeda financed plan was crashing a plane into the CIA building.

Sometime in 1995: the CIA warned in its National Intelligence Estimate that Islamic extremists likely would strike on U.S. soil at landmarks in Washington or New York, or through the airline industry, although bin Laden was not named. However, within months the intelligence agency developed enough concern about the wealthy, Saudi-born militant to create a specific unit to track him and his followers.

1996
July 25: President Clinton asks Vice President Al Gore to chair a commission on improving air transportation safety.

July 30: President Clinton pushes for quick action on anti-terrorism legislation. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch calls anti-terrorism proposals a phony issue.

September 10: The Clinton administration proposes $1.1 billion in new spending to combat terrorism, including $429 million on airline security suggested by a commission headed by Vice President Al Gore in response to the TWA Flight 800 disaster. Republicans in the House and Senate oppose the expenditures.

1997
February 12: The White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, commonly known as the Gore Commission, issues its final report. The Gore Commission finds that security measures used by U.S. airlines are extremely inadequate and makes over fifty recommendations to improve security.

February 13: The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) complains that the Gore Commission overstepped its mandate.

March 10: In a New Republic article, Susan Ellingwood complains that the costs of Vice President Gore's airline security recommendations are too high for the benefits:

June: Speaking in Chicago, FBI agent John O'Neill, special agent in charge of the National Security Division in New York, warns of terrorist activity. "Almost all of the groups today, if they chose to, have the ability to strike us here in the United States"

Sometime in 1997: The CIA updated its intelligence estimate to ensure bin Laden appeared on its very first page as an emerging threat, cautioning that his growing movement might translate into attacks on U.S. soil.

1998
An FBI pilot in Oklahoma City warns of Middle Eastern men receiving flight training in Oklahoma.

July: President Clinton asks the Department of Defense to charter the U.S. Commission on National Security, which would also be called the Hart-Rudman Commission.

August 14: The CIA and Pentagon present evidence to President Clinton that Osama bin Laden is not only responsible for the Africa bombings but is planning additional terrorist attacks against Americans. The President orders the Navy to deploy warships with cruise missiles.

August: An al Quaeda operative named Muhammad Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, who did not die in the embassy bombing as planned, is picked up by the FBI. He confesses. The Federal Aviation Administration tells airlines to be on a "high degree of alertness" against possible hijackings by followers of Osama bin Laden.

August: According to the final 9/11 report, an American intelligence agency received information that a group of Libyans hoped to crash a plane into the World Trade Center.

August 20: The President orders the firing of cruise missiles against terrorist-related targets in Afghanistan and Sudan.

August 21: Republicans, including Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Dan Coats of Indiana, question the President's motives behind the cruise missile strikes.

September: An intelligence report is circulated based on information provided by a source who walked into an American consulate in East Asia, that "mentioned a possible plot to fly an explosives-laden aircraft into a U.S. city."

October 29: A Kurdish seperatist claiming to have a hand grenade attempted to hijack a Boeing 737 in order to crash the aircraft into the tomb of former Pres. Kemal Ataturk in Ankara. Turkish security forces stormed the plane and killed the hijacker.

1999
April 20: Two teenage boys, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, walked into their high school bearing lethal weapons and calmly began shooting down their fellow students. Afterwards, an examination of their computer uncovered a website they had designed in which they discussed their plan and in which they said that afterward they wanted to go to the Denver Airport, hijack a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center

July: President Clinton cuts off commercial contact with the Taliban when they refuse to hand over Osama bin Laden.

September: A Library of Congress report says that suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft into the Pentagon, the CIA or the White House.

2000
In January, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi arrive in San Diego and enroll in flight schools

April: FBI counter-terrorist agents in Newark, N.J. interrogated admitted terrorist trainee Niaz Khan for three weeks, created composite drawings of his terrorist trainer and a fellow student and then wired Khan up and took him back to JFK airport, hoping to smoke out other conspirators. But they had no luck. Kahn says that he had told them that he had been trained to hijack a plane and fly it into a building. According to Kahn, at the Lahore training compound he and up to 30 other men were taught hijacking basics, including how to smuggle guns and other weapons through airport security, techniques to overpower passengers and crew and how to get into a cockpit.

Fall: President Clinton initiates the Predator Drone program of unmanned recon flights into Afghanistan. Episodes reported from these flights include what many intelligence experts concluded were three separate sightings of bin Laden during a series of 11 Predator flights over the Afghan desert.

October 12: A small boat filled with C4 explosives detonates alongside a U.S. destroyer, the Cole, which is fuelling up off the coast of Yemen. Seventeen American sailors died, and thirty-nine others were seriously wounded. FBI agent John O'Neill leads a team of investigators to the scene.

Oct. 24-26: Pentagon officials carry out a "detailed" emergency drill based upon the crashing of a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon. [Source: The Mirror, May 24, 2002]

In November, George W. Bush is selected to be the new president of the United States.

2001
January: Sandy Berger, national security adviser to the Clinton Administration, gives Condoleezza Rice a handover briefing and warns her that she would be spending more time on the threat of Osama bin Laden than anything else.

January: The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, Va. -- right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996 that frustrated efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast, Nov. 7, 2001]

January 31: The U.S. Commission on National Security issues a report in which seven Democrats and seven Republicans unanimously approved 50 recommendations to combat terrorism. In the words of the commission's executive summary, The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack. Recommendations included making a cabinet-level agency in charge of homeland security. The commission also said that homeland security should not be left to FEMA alone.

February: The FAA investigates a Saudi man named Hanji Hanjour, who is attending a flight school in Arizona

February: Testifying before Congress, CIA Director George Tenet says, Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat to U.S. security. As we have increased security around government and military facilities, terrorists are seeking out 'softer' targets that provide opportunities for mass casualties, Tenet said.

February 5: The Taliban request official recognition from the Bush Administration

February 26: Delivering the keynote speech at the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation's three-day conference on the theme "Terrorism: Informing the Public," Paul Bremmer said, "The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?' That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it. Maybe the folks in the press ought to be pushing a little bit."

March 1:Osama bin Laden recites a poem at his son's wedding taking credit for the bombing of the USS Cole:

A destroyer: even the brave fear its might.
It inspires horror in the harbour and in the open sea.
She sails into the waves
Flanked by arrogance, haughtiness and false power.
To her doom she moves slowly
A dinghy awaits her, riding the waves.

After deciding that bin Laden was, in fact, responsible for the attack on the Cole, president Bush and his staff decide not to retaliate at the time.

March 18-March 23: Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, a personal adviser to Mohammed Omar of the Taliban, visits the United States. He makes several television appearances, such as an appearance on PBS Newshour in which he says, "Osama Bin Laden existed 17 years before we existed. He was there during the Soviet occupation, and the fact is that such people were [provoked] and indirectly instigated by certain governments in the West to go and fight the Soviet Union. And such people were called the heroes of independence, freedom fighters. Very good titles. And now when these people are not needed anymore, they have been transformed into terrorists, exactly like Arafat was a terrorist and now a hero when they need him."

April: Officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) wanted to develop a response in the event that a terrorist group would use an airliner as a missile to attack the Pentagon, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected the scenario as "too unrealistic."

April 3: Senator Gary Hart tells the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Technology that an urgent need existed for a new national security strategy, with an emphasis on intelligence gathering.

April 30: CNN reports that the Bush Administration's release of the government's annual terrorism report contains a serious change: "there was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden" as there had been in previous years. When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, "a senior Bush State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden."

May 1: The Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation.

May 6: Boston TV station (Fox-25) airs reporter Deborah Sherman's story on an undercover investigation at Logan Airport. In nine of 10 tries, a crew got knives and other weapons through security checkpoints - including the very ones the 9/11 hijackers would later exploit. The next day, a retired FAA agent named Brian Sullivan, fired off a two-page letter to Kerry highlighting the systemic failures. In part, the letter read:

"With the concept of jihad, do you think it would be difficult for a determined terrorist to get on a plane and destroy himself and all other passengers? … Think what the result would be of a coordinated attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day. With our current screening, this is more than possible. It is almost likely.

Sullivan followed up by having the undercover videotape hand-delivered to Kerry's office. Kerry forwarded the tape to the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General (DOT OIG).

May 17: President Bush announces his own anti-terrorism plans. Ignoring in its totality the work and recommendations of the bipartisan commission chartered by President Clinton, President Bush announced that homeland security would be coordinated by Joe M. Allbaugh, FEMA Director. Prior to his appointment to FEMA, Allbaugh served as Bush's chief of staff when Bush was governor of Texas. Earlier in his career, Allbaugh served as Oklahoma Deputy Secretary of Transportation. Bush also directed Vice President Dick Cheney to develop a national counter-terrorism plan. The Clinton Administration's Commission on National Security's report is shelved.

May 30: Four men are convicted in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Witnesses testified at the trial that Osama bin Laden was sending al Qaeda agents to the United States for flight-school training.

Sometime in this period: After a Federal judge chastizes the FBI for improperly seeking permission to wiretap terrorists, a highly classified program before the Justice Department called "Catcher's Mitt" to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States is curtailed.

Also in this period: According to an interview with translator Sibel Edmonds in Salon magazine:

"President Bush said they had no specific information about Sept. 11, and that's accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat we're facing."

June: German intelligence warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture."

According to Salon, 120 documents declassified in June of 2012 reveal that between June and September of 2001, the Bush administration received no less than seven direct warnings in CIA Intelligence Briefs that Osama bin Laden was planning a terrorist attack on US soil.

June 22: The PDB for this date reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

June 23: The Reuters news agency distributed a report headlined "Bin Laden Fighters Plan anti-US attack." The lead:

"Followers of exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden are planning a major attack on U.S. and Israeli interests."

June 25: UPI informed its subscribers that "Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden is planning a terrorist attack against the United States."

June 26: Espionage sources report a spike in intelligence traffic about possible terrorist strikes on July 4. The White House is informed.

June 26: In another UPI report entitled "Bin Laden Forms New Jihadi Group," the formalization of ties between bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the Egyptian branch of Islamic Jihad is described.

June 29: The PDB for this date reads, “The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” and included much of their evidence and what the New York Times described as, an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya." The CIA had compiled this intell to specifically undercut a neo-con assessment that the bin Laden chatter they had been gathering was a coordinated distraction between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein designed to distract from an actual attack being planned by Hussein.

The Times also reports that, "[T]he C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have 'dramatic consequences,' including major casualties."

July: John O'Neill is barred by bureaucrats in the U.S. Justice Department from returning to Yemen to continue his investigation of the Cole disaster. According to some accounts, he complained that his investigation into Al-Qeada was shut down due to pressure from the Saudi government and oil interests. O'Neill decides to retire from the FBI. He accepts a position as chief of security at the World Trade Center in New York.

July: Convicted in the spring of 2001 for planning to bomb the Los Angeles Airport, Ahmed Ressam gives investigators detailed information on Al Quada's plans for terrorism in the United States.

July: Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the Taliban Foreign Minister, learns of planned attacks on America from the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yildash. Mr. Muttawakil, who was known to be deeply unhappy with the foreign militants in Afghanistan, decides to warn the United States. He sent an emissary to the American consul general in Peshawar, David Katz, in the third week of July 2001.

July 1: The PDB for that date said that a planned attack had been delayed, and warned that an attack, “will occur soon.”

July 1: Senator Diane Feinstein of California, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, tells CNN, "Intelligence staff tell me that there is a major probability of a terrorist incident within the next three months." She says that more money is needed for intelligence and counter-terrorism measures.

July 2: FBI warns law enforcement agencies and the White House of possible al Qaeda attacks overseas, and also says domestic strikes cannot be ruled out.

July 5: July 4 passes with no terrorist attacks, but the CIA tells President Bush that attacks are still possible. According to Newsweek, Bush directs National Security Adviser Rice to find out what might be going on regarding domestic terrorism.

July 6: A National Security Council group led by Richard Clarke, national coordinator for counter-terrorism, meets to discuss intelligence and terrorist threats overseas. Nonessential travel by counter-terrorism staff is suspended.

July 9: According to a New York Times report, during a meeting of the counter-terrorism group of Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A., one frustrated member suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that others would be responsible when the attack happened.

July 10: Kenneth Williams, a counter terrorism agent in the FBI's Phoenix office, notices that a number of suspected terrorists were learning to fly airplanes and asking questions about airport security. Williams's superior, William Kurtz, writes a memo urging all U.S. flight schools be checked. However, the warnings from the Kurtz team are ignored in Washington.

July 10: According to Bob Woodward's book, State of Denial, CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism head Cofer Black sought an urgent meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to go over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and "sounded the loudest warning" to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden. Woodward writes that although Rice was polite, "They felt the brushoff." Shortly after the revelation of this meeting in the press (a meeting Rice claims not to recall) an examination of White House logs confirms that the meeting did in fact take pace. A few days later it is announced that similar meetings were held with John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld.

July 11: Information gathered by the C.I.A. is conveyed to the white house that Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers in Chechnya that there would soon be very big news.

July 18: The FBI warns law enforcement of threats made in connection to the conviction of Ahmed Ressam. The White House is also informed.

July 20 - 22: After warnings from a number of sources, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a close US ally, that a hijacked airplane filled with explosives might be crashed into the conference building housing the G-8 Summit in Genoa, the Italian authorities deployed anti-aircraft guns around the site and banned local flights. As an added precaution, throughout the summit, Bush spent his nights on a US navy warship in the harbor.

July 24: Reacting to the multiple warnings he had already received, President Bush requested that a PDB describing broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history be compiled.

July 26: CBS News reports that Attorney General Ashcroft is traveling by private jet because of a threat assessment.

August: Mossad officials travel to Washington to warn the CIA and the FBI that a cell of up to 200 terrorists is planning a major operation. The Israelis specifically warn their counterparts in Washington that "large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent."

August 5: President Bush begins a one-month vacation on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The BBC reports that "By the end of this holiday, Mr Bush will have spent nearly two months of his presidency at his ranch, and an additional 14 weekends at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. This holiday, therefore, has been described by his advisers, who are sensitive to the possibility that the president might be perceived as lazy, as a working vacation -- a Home to the Heartland Tour. The President says that he intends to spend part of this time considering policy for stem cell research."

August 6: A daily briefing of the vacationing President Bush presented the possibility of an airplane hijacking as a terrorist threat. According to National Security Adviser Rice, the briefing was an analystic report that talked about terrorist methods of operation, talked about what he had done historically. Update: in her 9/11 commission testimony of 3/8/04, Rice admitted that the briefing was actually entitled Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US.

August 15: A flight school in Minneapolis reports Zacarias Moussaoui to the FBI.

August 16: Moussaoui is arrested on immigration charges. FBI agents apply for a warrant to search his computer, but permission is denied.

August 20 (or there abouts): George J. Tenet and his deputies at the Central Intelligence Agency are presented with a briefing paper labeled Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly about the arrest days earlier of Zacarias Moussaoui, but did not act on the information.

August 27: French authorities notify the FBI that Zacarias Moussaoui is a suspected Islamic extremist.

September: In a memo on the Moussaoui case, a Minnesota FBI agent suggested that the suspect could fly a plane into the World Trade Center.

September 10: A plan by the CIA to attack al Qaeda in Afghanistan is put on the President's desk.

September 10: Senator Feinstein asks for a meeting with Vice President Cheney to discuss terrorism. Cheney's chief of staff tells the senator they need six months to prepare for this meeting although Cheney had been directed to create a national counter-terrorism plan back in May 2001.

September 10: The National Security Agency picks up Arabic conversations including the phrases "tomorrow is zero hour" and "the match begins tomorrow."

September 10: Attorney General John Ashcroft rejects a proposed $58 million increase in financing for the FBI's counter-terrorism programs.

September 11: You know what happened.

Also September 11: Meeting in the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, DC, members of the Carlyle Group watch the events of the day on television. Among those present are former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state (and current Iraq envoy) James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Laden family. Members not in attendance include former U.S. president George Bush Sr., former U.K. prime minister John Major, and former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos. According to a report in Red Herring, "Carlyle has established itself as the gatekeeper between private business interests and U.S. defense spending. And as the Carlyle investors watched the World Trade towers go down, the group's prospects went up."

September: CBS News reports that in the days following September 11 several members of the bin Laden family are evacuated from the United States under FBI supervision.

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Most of the information for this post should be credited to Maha’s Timeline of Terror. I removed all references which I considered to be not directly related to Rice’s assertion, and added a few new items as I found them. There may be more updates in the coming months.

Update: According to an article in the Washington Post, Dr. Condaleezza Rice

had asked, in her private meetings with the (9/11) commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the commission that she misspoke; the commission has received information that prior to Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies and Clarke had talked about terrorists using airplanes as missiles.

Last Updated 9/11/12

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