The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden

by Anthony Summers

  The puzzling incident of the New Jersey Israelis, however, did deserve serious public examination. Yet the possible role of Israeli intelligence in the 9/11 case—at any level—has been investigated by no official body (Dubai: NYT, 2/18/10; “senior Israeli”: Telegraph [U.K.], 9/16/01, LAT, 9/20/01, 9/21/01; men on van: 20/20, ABC News, 6/21/02—transcript available at www.​911myths.​com, Forward, 2/3/03, CounterPunch, 3/07/07; “art students”: Gerald Shea, “Israeli Surveillance of the Future Hijackers and FBI Suspects in the Sept. 11 Attacks,” Memorandum to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States et al., 9/15/04. Also, see Justin Raimondo, The Terror Enigma, NY: iUniverse, 2003).

  16 “hostile service”: James Risen, State of War, NY: Free Press, 2006, 181.

  CHAPTER 16

  1 “BUSH CALLS”/memorial service, etc./“After all”: int. Ari Fleischer by Scott Pelley, 8/6/02, & by Terry Moran, 8/9/02, “EOP Press Interviews,” B1, T3, CF, NYT, 9/15/01, “With the President: A Reporter’s Story of 9/11,” www.​rochester.​edu

  2 “hunt down”: CNN, 9/12/01

  3 “We’re gonna”: Sammon, 113

  4 McWilliams/flag: “Raising the Flag at the WTC,” www.​famouspictures.​org, “About the Photo,” www.​groundzerospirit.​org, DiMarco, 181fn

  5 memorial service/“Battle Hymn”: ABC News video at www.​youtube.​com, int. Condoleezza Rice by Bob Woodward, 10/24/01, “Farmer Misc.,” B9, NYC files, CF

  6 “monumental”: “Remarks by the President,” 9/12/01, www.​avalon.​law.​yale.​edu. See Note re death toll in sourcing for Preface. Accounts differ on the authorship of the President’s speech and the way it developed. Gerson aside, aides involved Bush’s counselor Karen Hughes, and speechwriters Matthew Scully and David Frum (WP, 1/27/02, “Present at the Creation,” Atlantic, 9/07, “The President’s Story,” 9/11/02, www.​cbsnews.​com, Nation, 2/13/03, David Frum, The Right Man, NY: Random House, 2003, 142, Michael Gerson, Heroic Conservatism, NY: HarperOne, 2007, 69)

  7 war council: CR, 330

  8 Muttawakil: “Defending Bin Laden,” www.​newsweek.​com, 9/11/01

  9 Taliban propose: Foreign Policy Journal, 8/12/09

  10 “We’re not only”: int. Ari Fleischer by Scott Pelley

  11 never considered: int. Condoleezza Rice by Bob Woodward

  12 ultimatum: “Bush Delivers Ultimatum,” www.​unwire.​org, 9/21/01

  13 rejected: LAT, 9/22/01.

  14 Musharraf: Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, NY: Free Press, 2006, 201–. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, and the 2006 biography of Colin Powell, Musharraf complied with all the U.S. demands. In a memoir the same year, Musharraf said he balked at permitting the U.S. military “blanket overflight and landing rights” and “use of Pakistan’s naval ports, air bases and strategic locations on borders.” Instead, he wrote, he offered “only a narrow flight corridor” and “only two bases … for logistics and aircraft recovery.” Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who delivered the American demands, for his part denied that he had threatened to bomb Pakistan. There was clearly massive pressure, however. In the words of CIA director Tenet, Armitage “dropped the hammer on them” (CR, 331–, Karen DeYoung, Soldier, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006, 349, Tenet, 179).

  15 “Need to move”: Notes of Stephen Cambone, 9/11/01, released under FOIA to Thad Anderson, www.​outraged​moderates.​com

  16 “I know”: DOD press conference, 9/18/01, www.​defenselink.​mil

  17 “urged the President”: CR, 330, 558n34

  18 OBL/hijackers Saudis: Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Travel,” CO.

  19 “do Iraq”: CR, 335, Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004, 26. The need to “do Iraq” is referred to in Ch. 9, p. 87. As noted there, it is not clear whether Rumsfeld spoke of “doing” Iraq on the night of 9/11 or at a meeting the following day. “Look”: Richard Clarke, 32–, CR, 334 & see Ben-Veniste, 302

  20 Pressure to act: CR, 334–, MFR of int. Colin Powell, 1/21/04, CF

  21 formal order: Woodward, Plan of Attack, 26

  22 contingency plan: CR, 335, Testimony of Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04, CO, & see MFR 04021460, 4/9/04. The most vocal proponent of hitting Iraq was Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz. To Secretary of State Powell, it seemed that “some of his colleagues were trying to use the events of 9/11 to promote their own policy obsessions and settle old scores” (MFR of Colin Powell, 1/21/04, CF, DeYoung, 348–, CR, 335–).

  23 Camp David/prayer: DeYoung, 350–

  24 “patience”: DOD press conference, 1/9/02, www.​defenselink.​mil

  25 Black briefed: Tenet, 177

  26 Shelton: DeYoung, 351–

  27 “When we’re through”: Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004, 185

  28 “comfort food”/“Amazing Grace”/O’Neill: ibid., 189–

  29 CIA proposing/Memorandum: New Yorker, 8/17/07, 8/4/03, NYT, 9/10/06, 12/15/02, Joseph Margulies, Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006, 189, CR, 333, “Who Authorized the Torture of Abu Zubaydah,” www.​huffing​tonpost.​com, 4/28/09

  30 “war on terrorism”: NY Daily News, 9/17/01, BBC News, 9/16/01

  31 “war on terror”: Bush address, CNN, 9/20/01.

  32 joint session: The joint session was on September 30. On the 14th, the Congress had passed a resolution authorizing the use of “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks “or harbored such organizations or persons.” The resolution passed in the Senate by 98 votes to 0, in the House by 420 votes to 1 (Richard Grimmett, “Authorization for Use of Military Force in Response to the 9/11 Attacks,” Congressional Research Service)

  33 “I want”: CNN, 9/17/01, int. Dan Bartlett by Scott Pelley, 8/12/02, “Press Interviews of Staff,” B1, T3, CF

  34 “platter”: Meet the Press, www.​cbsnews.​com, 9/16/01

  35 “Gentlemen”: Gary C. Schroen, First In, NY: Ballantine, 2005, 40

  36 “The mission”: Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006, 21.

  37 British commandos: The British contingent was from the Special Boat Service, or SBS, similar to the better known SAS—Special Air Service—but drawn largely from the ranks of the Royal Marines. Though specializing in amphibious operations, the unit also operates overland. British and American special units have long collaborated. As for the overall number of operatives initially sent into Afghanistan, the authors have used the figure given by the commander of the Delta Force unit on the ground. Perhaps referring to a total at a somewhat later stage of the operation, Bob Woodward referred in his book Bush at War to a larger figure: “about 110 CIA officers and 316 Special Forces personnel” (SBS: “The Special Boat Service,” www.​hmforces.​co.​uk, “British Special Forces Member Killed in Afghanistan,” Guardian [U.K.], 7/2/10, Alastair Finlan, “The [Arrested] Development of UK Special Forces and the Global War on Terror,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 35, 2009; overall number: Dalton Fury, Kill bin Laden, NY: St. Martin’s, 2008, xix, Woodward, Bush at War, 314).

  38 “This is why”: Schroen, 33

  39 “Tell them”: Gary Berntsen & Ralph Pezzullo, Jawbreaker, NY: Three Rivers, 2005, 289.

  40 Dalton Fury: “Dalton Fury” is the pen name the major used as author of a 2008 book on the operation against bin Laden. While protecting his identity, the media have accepted his authenticity (Fury, 200; major media: e.g., 60 Minutes, CBS, 10/5/08)

  41 “A cloudy”: Fury, xx

  42 $100 bills/“Money”: Schroen, 29,38, 88, 93–

  43 duffel bags: Fury, 105

  44 defeat: Tommy Franks with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier, NY: Regan, 2004, 322

  45 “God has”: ed. Lawrence, 104

  46 “great, long-term”: Bergen, OBL I Know, 316

  47 “safe and sound”: ibid., 322

&n
bsp; 48 poor intelligence: Berntsen & Pezzullo, 156, 108

  49 Atef: Hamid Mir, “How Osama Has Survived,” www.​rediff.​com, 9/11/07, bin Ladens & Sasson, 271

  50 OBL Jalalabad: Christian Science Monitor, 3/4/02, Berntsen & Pezzullo, 239, Sunday Times (London), 1/15/09, John Miller & Michael Stone with Chris Mitchell, The Cell, NY: Hyperion, 2002, 319, Corbin, 262–

  51 “Black Widow”: Newsweek, 12/10/01, BBC News, 9/27/08

  52 Towr Ghar: Fury, 107, “The Caves & Graves of Tora Bora,” www.​legionmagazine.​com, 9/1/03

  53 “purpose-built”: The Independent (U.K.), 11/27/01 & see “The Lair of Bin Laden,” www.​edwardjepstein.​com

  54 no electricity/water: bin Ladens & Sasson, 185–

  55 schoolhouse: Berntsen & Pezzullo, 253, Fury, 108

  56 Afghan generals: e.g., Berntsen & Pezzullo, 272, 275, 280–, Fury, 114–, 124, 129–, 257

  57 negotiating: Berntsen & Pezzullo, 289–, NYT, 9/11/05, Fury, 216–, 234, 244

  58 OBL largesse/sons: Fury, 209, 108

  59 “flawed”: Fury, 99, Berntsen & Pezzullo, 213–

  60 reluctance: Berntsen & Pezzullo, 277–, 290, 295, 305–, 309, 314, “In the Footsteps of Bin Laden,” CNN, 8/23/06

  61 airpower: e.g., Berntsen & Pezzullo, 270, 274–, Fury, 170–, 192

  62 Marine: Berntsen & Pezzullo, 34–, 283–

  63 “tall”: ibid., 291

  64 6′4″: “Most Wanted Terrorists,” www.​fbi.​gov

  65 BLU-82: description at www.​global​security.​org, Berntsen & Pezzullo, 291, Fury, 127

  66 Used on plains: Berntsen & Pezzullo, 137–

  67 delivered: ibid., 295–, Fury, 149–

  68 BLU-82: described at www.​fas.​org, Michael O’Hanlon, “A Flawed Masterpiece,” Foreign Affairs, 3/02

  69 “too hot”/“hideous”: “Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today,” Report, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2009, 7

  70 movement orders: Fury, 230.

  71 “victory or death”/“Father”: According to Delta Force leader Fury, bin Laden was overheard saying in desperation, “arm your women and children against the infidel!” His lead bodyguard Abu Jandal has recalled that “all bin Laden’s wives knew how to handle weapons. They had taken a military course while al Qaeda was in the Sudan.” It seems unlikely, though, that the terrorist leader would have expected young children to take part in the battle (Fury, 233, Nasser al-Bahri [Abu Jandal] with Georges Malbrunot, Dans l’Ombre de Ben Laden, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France: Michel Lafon, 2010, 199).

  72 Dec. 13/listened to a voice: The CIA’s Gary Berntsen dated this last intercept as having occurred not on December 13 but the 15th. Fury suggested that bin Laden was overheard once more, a day or so later. What he said, Fury wrote, came over as “more of a sermon than issuing orders” (Fury, 233–, 236–, Berntsen & Pezzullo, 307).

  73 devastation: Fury, 270, 272, Berntsen & Pezzullo, 296

  74 not a trace/“punched”/rubble/Exhumations: Fury, 286, 282, Newsweek, 10/31/08

  75 “real war”: Fury, 293

  76 “We need”: Berntsen & Pezzullo, 290

  77 Dailey: Berntsen & Pezzullo, e.g., 307, 276

  78 “We have not said”: DOD press conference, 11/8/01, www.​defense.​gov, & see Franks with McConnell, 388

  79 skirted discussion: ibid.

  80 As recently as 2009: In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and on the PBS program Frontline, Franks suggested that the drive to “get into Tora Bora” came from the Afghan commanders. A decision was made, he said, to support the Afghan operation and to “work with the Pakistanis along the Pakistani border.” He declared himself “satisfied with the decision process.” CIA’s Gary Berntsen has responded by writing that Franks was “either badly misinformed or blinded by the fog of war.” Berntsen had made it clear in his reports, he said, that the Afghans were less than keen to attack Tora Bora. General Franks, meanwhile, has also said he had concerns as to the amount of time it would have taken to get U.S. troops into the mountains. He has pointed out, too, most recently in 2009, that relying principally on Afghan ground forces in the field had worked in overthrowing the Taliban (“get into”/“work with”: int. Tommy Franks for Frontline, www.​pbs.​org; “satisfied”: Testimony of Tommy Franks, U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, 7/31/02, www.​access.​gpo.​gov; Berntsen: Berntsen & Pezzullo, 290–; concerns: New Republic, 12/22/09).

  81 “conflicting”: New Republic, 12/22/09 & see NYT, 10/19/04, MFR 04021460, 4/9/04. General Michael DeLong, who had been Franks’s deputy at CentCom, wrote in his September 2004 memoir that bin Laden “was definitely there when we hit the caves.” Then, after Franks had expressed doubt in an October 19 article, he abruptly reversed himself. “Most people fail to realize,” DeLong wrote in a November 1 article in The Wall Street Journal, “that it is quite possible that bin Laden was never in Tora Bora to begin with.” There was a report the same month—citing what Taliban sources had purportedly said at the time—that bin Laden had been “nowhere near Tora Bora” but had sent a decoy there to deceive U.S. intelligence. If the Taliban did make such a claim, there is no good reason to credit it. If bin Laden was indeed at Tora Bora, the claim was as likely disinformation designed to take pressure off. (For what it is worth, bin Laden himself in a 2003 audiotape spoke of the Tora Bora battle as though he was present.) The intelligence cited by Berntsen and Fury as to bin Laden having been at Tora Bora, on the other hand—information from human sources coupled with voice recognition of intercepted radio conversations—remains persuasive (“was definitely”: U.S. Senate, Tora Bora Revisited, 8; “Most people”: WSJ, 11/1/04 & see MFR 04021460 4/9/04, CF; “nowhere near”: CounterPunch, 11/1/04—citing Kabir Mohabbat; bin Laden: ed. Lawrence, 18–).

  82 “The generals”: Fury, xxiii–.

  83 “never took”: NYT, 10/19/04. During his 2004 campaign against Bush for the presidency, Senator John Kerry claimed the President “took his eye off the ball, off of Osama bin Laden” (second Bush-Kerry debate, 4/10/08, cbsnews.​com)

  84 “get” bin Laden: Woodward, Bush at War, 254, 224, 311, The Times (London), 10/14/01

  85 “going to lose”: Suskind, One Percent, 58–

  86 “asking”: Fury, 148

  87 “obsessed”: Suskind, One Percent, 96, Woodward, Bush at War, 338

  88 “Terror’s bigger”: Bush press conference, http://​archives.​cnn.​com, 3/13/02.

  89 taken Rumsfeld: Woodward, Plan of Attack, 1–

  90 “Goddamn!”: ibid., 8 & see Franks, 315

  91 general pestered: Woodward, Plan of Attack, 31, 36–, 42– & see Michael Gordon & Bernard Trainor, Cobra II, NY: Pantheon, 2006, 25–.

  92 “a natural”: al-Wafd (Egypt), 12/26/01, citing Pakistan Observer, www.​opednews.​com, Fox News, 12/26/01

  93 escape/wound: Newsweek, 10/31/08, Fury, 286, New Republic, 10/22/07, NYT, 9/23/02, Bergen, OBL I Know, 334–, U.S. Senate, Tora Bora Revisited, 2

  94 2011 reports/tribes: Guardian (U.K.), 4/26/11, Michael Scheuer, Osama bin Laden, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011, 131.

  95 Good evidence/02/03/04: Not included here as an indication of bin Laden’s survival is a videotaped statement shown by Al Jazeera on December 26, 2001. Though that transmission postdated the Tora Bora battle, all one knows for sure—because of a reference in the statement to the bombing “some days ago” of a mosque at Khost—is that it was recorded shortly after November 16. Thus not necessarily after the Tora Bora conflict ended—on December 17 (ed. Lawrence, 151–, U.S. Senate, Tora Bora Revisited, 14).

  96 “We agreed”: Though not all the hijacked flights took off on time on 9/11, they had been scheduled to take off within the same twenty-five-minute period. The authors have in these paragraphs cited letters and tapes attributed to bin Laden, edited by Professor Bruce Lawrence, humanities professor of religion at Duke University, translated by James Howa
rth, and published in book form.

  “Although the question of authenticity inevitably arises whenever a message is released in bin Laden’s name,” Howarth wrote, the statements in the book had all “been accepted as genuine by a majority of the experts and officials who have examined them.” Lawrence and others have cast doubt on the authenticity of other taped statements attributed to bin Laden, allowing for the possibility of forgery for propaganda purposes.

  It is not a ridiculous notion, for the CIA is on record as having fabricated film footage. In the late 1950s it arranged for the making of a film purportedly showing President Sukarno of Indonesia in bed with a woman in the Soviet Union. As late as 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, there was discussion about making a video showing Saddam Hussein having sex with a teenage boy. According to a Washington Post report, the CIA actually did make a video “purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys.”

  Doubts have been expressed about a videotape released in December 2001, supposedly following its seizure by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It purports to show bin Laden in conversation the previous month with a visiting sheikh, openly acknowledging his foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack. While there may be other good reasons to doubt the tape’s authenticity, the authors suggest that a couple of points made in support of the forgery theory have no validity.

  Skeptics noted that the bin Laden figure wears a ring in the video—supposedly out of character for him, perhaps even contrary to religious law. As noted in another chapter, his wife Najwa had given him a ring as a token of her affection just before leaving Afghanistan on the eve of 9/11. He is, moreover, shown wearing a ring in another video accepted as authentic. Bin Laden’s son Omar, meanwhile, has scotched the argument that a shot of his father writing with his right hand is a giveaway—as the real Osama was supposedly left-handed. “My father,” Omar wrote in 2009, “is right-handed.”

  That is not to say that the “confession” videotape is necessarily authentic. Professor Lawrence did not use the transcript of it in his published collection on bin Laden, and has reportedly expressed the view that the tape is indeed a fake. No quotations from it have been used in this book (scheduled: CR, 10; ed. Lawrence, 158–244 & see BBC News, 4/15/04, “The Osama bin Laden Tapes,” Special Report, undated, www.​guardian.​co.​uk; Sukarno: Interim Report, “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders,” U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Govt. Ops with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 11/20/55, 74n4, Anthony Summers, Goddess, NY: Macmillan, 1985, 182; Hussein sex/“purporting”: WP, 5/25/10; video 12/01: transcript by Defense Dept. cited www.​defenselink.​mil, NYT, 12/14/01; not ring: e.g., Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, 209, “Farce: Control of the Village Through Terror,” 2/6/07, www.​opednews.​com; had ring: bin Ladens & Sasson, 282 & see “Confession Video,” www.​911myths.​com; left-handed: David Ray Griffin, Osama bin Laden, Gloucestershire, U.K.: Arris, 2009, 30, Bergen, OBL I Know, 335; “right-handed”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 159–; reportedly expressed: Griffin, OBL, 36).