The Eleventh Day

by Anthony Summers

  In its fury and its fear, some say, America lost its way. Perhaps it did. On the other hand, the extreme measures its terrorist enemies espouse will lead not to utopia for anyone, only to further horrors. Crammed together on a small planet beset with desperate problems, the more than three hundred million non-Muslim Americans, the world’s 1.65 billion Muslims, and the billions of others of differing religions and none must find other ways to resolve what divides them.

  In New York, there has been quibbling over even the quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid chosen for the wall at the Ground Zero memorial behind which the unknown dead would lie. Should the quotation survive the debate, it at least will—however unintentionally—remain valid for both the murdered victims of 9/11 and their murderers. It reads:

  “No day shall erase you from the memory of Time.”

  For Angela Santore Amicone

  and

  Chris and Gaye Humphreys

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This is the eighth heavily researched book project we have undertaken. All involved difficult challenges or required us to tackle intractable questions. Sometimes we have managed to answer the questions. Often, we hope, we have managed to clear up historical muddle or confusion. Nothing, however, quite prepared us for the tangle of fact, fallacy, and fantasy that enmesh this dark history.

  We were reminded at every step of the way that the story on which we were embarked was freighted with human suffering: that of those who died on September 11 itself, of those killed in earlier and subsequent attacks, and of the more than 100,000 people who have died and continue to die in the ensuing conflicts—and those left grieving across the world.

  In this Acknowledgments section of our book, then, we honor first and foremost those who will never be able to read it.

  Writing The Eleventh Day has been a task for which we needed more than usual guides to people and places, nations and cultures, that do not readily reveal themselves. Our personal thanks, then, to those we can name: Hugh Bermingham, who has lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for almost thirty years; the author Jean Sasson, who also lived there and who has the trust of the first wife and the fourth son of Osama bin Laden; Flagg Miller, associate professor of religious studies at the University of California at Davis, who has analyzed bin Laden’s writing in unique depth; editor and author Abdel Atwan, who interviewed bin Laden and reads the galloping pulse of history in the Middle East with rare expertise; and Alain Chouet, former head of security intelligence with the DGSE—France’s foreign intelligence service—and an accomplished Arabist in his own right.

  Others with a variety of backgrounds shared experience or special knowledge: Captain Anthony Barnes, who on 9/11 was deputy director of presidential contingency planning in the White House Military Office; Jean-Charles Brisard, lead investigator for lawyers representing families bereaved on 9/11, who opened up his vast archive of documents to us; John Farmer, former senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, now dean of Rutgers University Law School, who was an eminently informative source on the military response to the attacks; former U.S. senator and Florida governor Bob Graham, onetime chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence and cochair of the House-Senate Joint Inquiry into intelligence activities before and after September 11, 2001, who gave us time in Florida, Massachusetts, and London, and who champions truth-telling in a milieu where truth is so often a stranger; Simon Henderson, who heads the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Eleanor Hill, a former Defense Department inspector general and the Joint Committee’s relentless staff director; former FBI intelligence analyst Mike Jacobson, who served with both the Joint Committee and the 9/11 Commission and surfaced facts that others preferred suppressed; Miles Kara, a former career intelligence officer with the U.S. Army, who also served on both official probes—with a special focus on the FAA and NORAD while on the Commission team—and who was endlessly patient and responsive to our queries; Ryan Mackey, research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and author of a paper on conspiracy theories about 9/11, who applied a “baloney detection kit” to great effect; Sarandis Papadopoulos of the Naval Historical Center, who conducted research and interviews and coauthored the report on the Pentagon attack for the Office of the Secretary of Defense; Mete Sozen, professor of structural engineering at Purdue University in Indiana, who explained in a way we could understand—and believe—how it appeared that American Flight 77 was swallowed up by the Pentagon; teacher and literacy coach Dwana Washington, who vividly described for us the September 11 visit by President Bush to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida.

  Like so much of history, work on this project has been a paper chase. We owe sincere thanks to the National Archives, where the hugely able Kristen Wilhelm handled document applications and dealt with difficult questions with skill and evident integrity—wondrously refreshing for authors inured over the years to sustained obstruction to the public’s right to know. In 2010 and 2011, as we labored on far from Washington, and as tens of thousands of 9/11 Commission documents became available for the first time, we enjoyed the generous collegiate help of Erik Larson. The National Security Archive at George Washington University, which collects and publishes material obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, was often useful.

  In Europe, too, we learned much. In Germany, Dr. Manfred Murck, who before 9/11 and since has been deputy chief of Hamburg’s domestic intelligence service, put up with persistent quizzing for longer than we could have expected and, when obliged to limit what he could tell us, was frank about doing so; from Stuttgart, Dr. Herbert Müller, Islamic affairs specialist at the parallel organization in that city, gave ready assistance; Hamburg attorney Udo Jacob helped document the story of the young Islamists who gathered in the cause of jihad before 9/11—and who included several of the 9/11 perpetrators. Without his help we could not have gained admission to Fuhlsbüttel prison to visit Mounir Motassadeq, who is serving fifteen years for his supposed role as accessory to the murders of those aboard the four hijacked airliners on 9/11. Motassadeq, for his part, put up with our questions over a period of hours. It is not clear to us that he is guilty as charged, and should we not return to his case ourselves, we hope other investigators will. Also in Germany, Hans Kippenberg, professor of comparative religious studies at Bremen’s Jacobs University, and Dr. Tilman Seidensticker, professor of Arab and Islamic studies at Jena’s Friedrich Schiller University, helped with interpretation and translation of the hijackers’ “manual” and of Ziad Jarrah’s farewell letter to his Turkish lover.

  In Milan, Italy, deputy chief prosecutor and counterterrorism coordinator Armando Spataro gave us a first glimpse of the brutal injustices meted out in the name of the War on Terror; Bruno Megale, deputy head of counterterrorism, described police surveillance operations in northern Italy before 9/11. While we failed to get to Spain, our friend Charles Cardiff’s reading of the Spanish dossier—accumulated by Judge Baltasar Garzón—persuaded us of al Qaeda’s pre-9/11 reach in that country.

  The fellow journalists who helped us are too numerous to name. Of their number, we thank especially Thomas Joscelyn, Gerald Posner, Jeffrey Steinberg, and Joseph Trento in the United States; Guillaume Dasquié, Richard Labévière, and Alexandra Richard in France; and Josef Hufelschulte in Germany. Also in Germany, we much appreciated the hard-earned knowledge and professionalism of Dirk Laabs, an all-around reporter and practitioner of the time-honored school of shoe-leather journalism.

  Yosri Fouda, the brave reporter who interviewed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was helpful to us from Cairo—as was his colleague Nick Fielding, who subsequently worked with him on a book about the experience.

  We have on our shelves more than three hundred books that relate one way or another to 9/11, al Qaeda, and the roots from which al Qaeda sprang. Those of Peter Bergen, Steve Coll, Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, former 9/11 Commission senior counsel John Farmer, Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, William Langewiesche, Jere Longman, Terry M
cDermott, Philip Shenon, and Lawrence Wright are essential reading. No one who wishes to explore the intelligence angles should miss the works of J. M. Berger, Peter Lance, and former senior CIA officer Michael Scheuer; Kevin Fenton’s deconstruction of the roles of the CIA, the FBI, and the 9/11 Commission—soon to be published as this book went to press, but kindly made available to us by the author—is valuable and provocative. Paul Thompson’s encyclopedic The Terror Timeline and, above all, his “Complete 9/11 Timeline,” updated regularly on the Net, were indispensable. The author Peter Dale Scott has taken his scalpel to the jugular of the story of President Bush and the aides who surrounded him.

  On the “skeptical” front, we thank author Daniel Hopsicker, investigator of the hijackers’ activities in Florida. He introduced us to Venice, shared his time unstintingly, and trusted us down the months—long after it became clear that where he saw conspiracy we saw coincidence or happenstance. There was something to be learned, as in the past, from John Judge, a veteran of alternative history in Washington, D.C.

  These days more than ever, nonfiction authors must head down the long research trail on shrunken budgets. It has been all the more rewarding, then, to have the loyalty and commitment of a new colleague. Hannah Cleaver, a Berlin-based journalist with prior expertise and knowledge of the case, made it clear that the story itself and the comradeship were as important to her as professional gain. The inquiring mind of intern Stefani Jackson produced useful research.

  The efficient Sinéad Sweeney, in Ireland, has long been far more valuable to us than a mere assistant. Moss McCarthy of LED Technology rescued us from more than one computer crisis. Martina Coonan helped out on the last lap, when every hour was precious. Pauline Lombard and Ann Dalton put up with our demands yet again. We thank, too, Ger Killalea, who keeps the office functioning, and Jason Cairns, who cheerfully turns his hand to anything under the sun.

  The Eleventh Day would not exist without the initial interest and backing of our publishers at Random House. Group president Gina Centrello and Ballantine publisher Libby McGuire in New York, and Transworld’s Bill Scott-Kerr in London, kept us going along a bumpy trail.

  Our editors, Mark Tavani and Simon Thorogood, were there for us in the final months with skill and good judgment. Where they saw clutter, they pointed the way to clarity. Our agent, Jonathan Lloyd, also reads everything we write with a keen editorial eye—a bonus for us—for he is himself a former publisher. He has steadied us, once again, with his combination of common sense and uncommon good humor.

  We thank our good friends and neighbors, who have been endlessly supportive. Our neglected children heroically put up with the neglect—though one has asked, “When are we going to be a family again?”

  The Eleventh Day is dedicated to our steadfast friends Chris and Gaye Humphreys—who know why—and to Angela Amicone, who turns ninety-five this year. Angela has been teaching children to read since 1940, and has no intention of giving up now.

  Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

  Ireland, 2011

  AP Images

  Flight 11 passenger Daniel Lewin, probably the first to die on 9/11. Marco Greenberg

  The Hanson family, passengers on Flight 175. On the phone to his father, Peter Hanson said: “Don’t worry.… If it happens, it’ll be very fast.” Hanson famly photo

  Flight 93 flight attendant CeeCee Lyles’s charred ID card, found after the crash. She had reached her husband to say the passengers were fighting back against the hijackers. Moussaoui trial exhibit

  Zoe Falkenberg, an eight-year-old passenger on Flight 77, and her sister, Dana, are among those remembered at the Pentagon memorial. Dana’s remains were not found. Mariana Perez

  Office workers at windows of the Trade Center’s North Tower. Trapped by fire, many jumped to their deaths. Jeff Christensen/Reuters

  Of those below the points of impact, most made their way to safety. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

  After the towers collapsed, New Yorkers ran pell-mell, a dust cloud at their heels. Hundreds have died, and many more are sick, from respiratory disease caused by the dust. AP Images

  President Bush is told that a second plane has crashed. Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

  In the Emergency Operations Center beneath the White House, Vice President Cheney speaks by phone with Bush. To the left of him is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. To the left of her, kneeling, is Navy commander Anthony Barnes. U.S. government

  The facade of the Pentagon before it collapsed. Skeptics doubted that it could have swallowed a Boeing 757 airliner. U.S. government

  Wreckage at the Pentagon. Some skeptics suggested that evidence had been planted. Moussaoui trial exhibit

  Flight 93’s Cockpit Voice Recorder—hauntingly, minute by minute, it tracked the progress of the hijacking. Moussaoui trial exhibit

  Investigators search the Pennsylvania field where Flight 93 crashed. In the foreground is the crater. Tim Shaffer/Reuters

  After, in New York. Doug Kanter/AFP/Getty Images

  Nine months later, draped in the flag, the last steel girder is removed from the ruins of the World Trade Center. It stands now in the memorial at Ground Zero. Peter Morgan/Reuters

  Osama bin Laden and his “holy war” against the United States, acclaimed by a crowd in Pakistan after 9/11. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times/Redux Pictures

  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed credit for the plot. Ramzi Binalshibh (below left) acted as a go-between for the hijackers. Abu Zubaydah (below right), a key al Qaeda logistics man, was gravely wounded during his arrest. How reliable are their confessions, obtained under “enhanced” interrogation?

  Heroes to some: a poster produced two years after the attacks, glorifying the hijackers. Authors’ collection

  Mohamed Atta, the hijackers’ leader, and Flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah in Afghanistan preparing to videotape martyrdom statements. The beards came off on their return to Europe. AP Images

  The men believed to have been at the controls of three of the hijacked airliners: Marwan al-Shehhi (top left), Hani Hanjour (right), and Ziad Jarrah, with his lover, Aysel Sengün (bottom), and in the cockpit of a light aircraft—he had recently completed pilot training.

  Khalid al-Mihdhar (above left) and Nawaf al-Hazmi (above right) were the first future hijackers to arrive in the United States. Omar al-Bayoumi (below left), a Saudi living in California who assisted them, said he met them by chance. Did Mohdar Abdullah (below right), who also befriended them, get advance information that an attack was coming?

  Anwar Aulaqi, an American-born imam, at a mosque after 9/11. He is characterized as having been a “spiritual adviser” to two future hijackers. Now in Yemen, he is considered a possible successor to bin Laden. The Washington Post/Getty Images

  Saleh al-Hussayen, a Saudi religious official. On the eve of 9/11, he stayed at the same hotel as two lead hijackers. Saudi Arabian government

  Saudi Prince Bandar (rear left) meeting at the White House with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and National Security Adviser Rice, two nights after the attacks. The White House

  The joint chairmen of Congress’s probe, Senators Bob Graham (center) and Richard Shelby (right), present their Report in 2003. They pointed out that many pages had been suppressed, on President Bush’s orders. The pages are still suppressed today. The Washington Post/Getty Images

  9/11 Commission members and staff watching video of the Twin Towers burning, at a hearing in 2004. AP Images

  Some of the bereaved who pressed for the creation of the Commission, and closely followed its progress, rejected its findings. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

  Osama bin Laden, apparently pictured here in hiding in Pakistan, was shot dead by U.S. commandos in May 2011. AP Images

  Americans celebrated the feared terrorist’s death, yet faced an uncertain future. AP Images

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES AND SOURCES

  AP Associated Press

  BG Bos
ton Globe

  CF Files of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, held at the National Archives, Record Group 148. Cited documents are listed here, as they are at the Archives, by folder name, box [B] and team [T] numbers. Many documents were supplied to the authors by an independent researcher, and others obtained on line via www.scribd.com or directly from the Archives.

  CO Website of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, archived at http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/about.html

  conv. conversation

  corr. Authors’ correspondence

  CR Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, NY: W. W. Norton, 2004

  FBI IG Review of the FBI’s Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the September 11 Attacks, Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, November 2004

  FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

  int. interview (by authors unless otherwise noted)

  INTELWIRE FBI documents sourced in the notes of the 9/11 Commission Report, obtained by Intelwire under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and available on its website, www.intelwire.com

  JI Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 107th Congress, 2nd Session