Planning of the September 11 attacks

Template:Short description Template:September 11th attacksIn the United States, on September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists who were members of al-Qaeda hijacked four airliners in an attempt to crash them into American landmarks. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were flown into 1 and 2 World Trade Center in New York City, respectively, which caused both buildings to collapse. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. The hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 likely targeted the White House or U.S. Capitol in D.C., but the plane's passengers revolted, causing it to crash in Pennsylvania.

In the 1990s, al-Qaeda official Khalid Sheikh Mohammed came up with the Bojinka plot, a plan to hijack planes departing Southeast Asia, and use them to attack the U.S., as well as assassinate Pope John Paul II. It was scheduled for 1995, but never happened, and the Pope was never killed. In 1999, Mohammed and al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, redesigned the plan, which became the plan for September 11. Soon, their organization contacted the Hamburg cell, a group of terrorists from Hamburg, Germany, led by Mohammed Atta, and sent some of them to al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan. The organization was allowed to operate in Afghanistan by its Taliban government. There, the cell learned about the hijacking plan, and returned to Hamburg to work out its details.

The hijackers were recruited from across the Middle East. In 2000 and 2001, they all entered the U.S., and lived in many states as they prepared for the attacks. The hijacker-pilots of the four planes—Atta (Flight 11), Marwan al-Shehhi (175), Hani Hanjour (77), and Ziad Jarrah (93), trained at flight schools there. On the morning of September 11, at airports in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey, the four groups passed through security with minor issues. Some phoned members of the other groups, likely to confirm the attacks were still on. They all boarded their flights with carry-on bags, which likely contained knives and box cutters. After taking off, they used those to stab some of the flights' crew members, and get into the cockpits.

Background

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Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda

In the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), Muslim-majority Afghanistan was invaded by the mostly non-Muslim Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Islamist connected to the royal House of Saud, left his country to organize the Afghan mujahideen, Muslims who fought the Soviets as jihadists; those who engage in jihad, Islamic religious struggle, are called mujahideen. For that purpose, bin Laden and Abdullah Yusuf Azzam founded Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK). MAK built up a large military force, until 1989, when the Soviets left Afghanistan. The two men then argued over what to do with that force. They both wanted to use it to defend any oppressed Muslims around the world. bin Laden then publicly urged the soldiers to wage jihad through terrorism; Azzam issued a fatwa condemning this approach, saying Islamic law condemns the killing of women and children. Azzam was soon killed by a bomb in Pakistan; it is unknown if bin Laden was involved. bin Laden took full control of MAK, which evolved into al-Qaeda. He was then further radicalized by Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, which started the Gulf War (1990–1991). This is when bin Laden's attention turned towards the United States. During the war, he urged the House of Saud not to host the 500,000 U.S. soldiers in the country, instead advocating use of a mujahideen force to oust the Iraqis. After the war, Saudi Arabia allowed U.S. troops to have a continuous presence in the country. Bin Laden strongly disagreed with this, and referred to the House of Saud as apostates. He believed this was a provocation to the entire Muslim world, interpreting Muhammad as having banned the "permanent presence of kafir [infidels] in Arabia". Bin Laden also objected to America's alliances with Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, and especially Israel. He viewed Israelis as kafir, and condemned them for oppressing and killing Palestinians with funding and arms from the U.S.

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The flag used by various al-Qaeda factions

Due to bin Laden's public beliefs, in 1991, Saudi Arabia exiled him from the country. He moved to Sudan, where, some investigators allege, he had al-Qaeda get involved in the 1993 assault on American troops at Mogadishu, Somalia. Under Saudi and American pressure, Sudan forced him out of the country in 1996. He then returned to Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda was harbored the country's Taliban government. In 1996, bin Laden issued a fatwa calling for the U.S. military to leave Saudi Arabia. In 1998, he and al-Zawahiri issued a fatwa, declaring war against the U.S., stating: "We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, [Americans] are all targets." In 1998, al-Qaeda bombed U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Origins of the September 11 attacks

The attacks were influenced by the Bojinka plot, a terrorist operation planned by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The plan would have included bombings of eleven trans-Pacific airliners and crashing a plane into the CIA Headquarters. Yousef tested the plan by planting a bomb aboard Philippine Airlines Flight 434 on December 11, 1994, which detonated, but only killed one passenger. The plot was intercepted when Yousef's Manila apartment burned down, and the Philippine National Police captured his laptop with the plans. Yousef himself was captured by American and Pakistani forces in 1995.

In 1996, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed presented a modified plan to bin Laden in Afghanistan. Mohammed envisioned hijacking ten airplanes on both the East and West coasts, and for nine of them to crash into the World Trade Center in New York City; The Pentagon, United States Capitol, CIA Headquarters, and FBI Headquarters in the Washington metropolitan area; the Library Tower in Los Angeles; Columbia Center in Seattle; and an unspecified nuclear power plant. Mohammed, in the tenth plane, would then kill every adult male passenger and land in a U.S. airport where he would then give a speech denouncing U.S. policies on Israel, the Philippines, and Arab nations, before releasing the remaining passengers. Nothing came of the idea at the time, however, as bin Laden rejected the plan as being too elaborate.

In December 1998, the Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorist Center reported to President Bill Clinton that al-Qaeda was preparing for attacks in the U.S., including training personnel to hijack aircraft.

In late 1998 or early 1999, bin Laden summoned Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and gave his approval for him to proceed with a scaled back version of the "planes operation." A series of meetings occurred in the spring of 1999, involving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy Mohammed Atef. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wanted to hit the World Trade Center, while bin Laden prioritized the White House, the U.S. Capitol, and the Pentagon because he believed that it would lead to the political collapse of the U.S. federal government. If any pilot could not reach his intended target, he was to crash the plane. Bin Laden recommended four individuals for the plot, including Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, Walid bin Attash, and Abu Bara al-Taizi. Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were both Saudi citizens, which made it straightforward for them to obtain U.S. visas, unlike bin Attash and al-Taizi who both were Yemeni citizens, and as such unable to get visas to the U.S. easily. The two Yemenis were assigned for the Asia component of the plot. When Mohamed Atta and other members of the Hamburg cell arrived in Afghanistan, bin Laden was involved in selecting them for the plot and assigned Atta to be its leader.

At the time, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed led al-Qaeda's 'military committee'. He provided operational support, such as selecting targets, and helped to arrange travel for the hijackers. He later recalled, "We had a large surplus of brothers willing to die as martyrs. As we studied various targets, nuclear facilities arose as a key option"...but the nuclear targets were dropped for concerns the plan would "get out of hand."

Hamburg cell

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Mohammed Atta was the ringleader of the Hamburg cell

Mohammed Atta, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah came into the picture in 1999, when they arrived in Kandahar from Germany. The Hamburg cell was formed in 1998 shortly after Atta received Al-Qaeda leadership approval for his plot. Atta, al-Shehhi, Jarrah, bin al-Shibh, Said Bahaji, Zakariyah Essabar, and others were all members. Atta was religious, but not fanatically so, when he came to Hamburg in 1992 to study urban planning at the Technical University of Hamburg. While there, he was drawn to the local al-Quds Mosque, which then adhered to a "harsh, uncompromisingly fundamentalist, resoundingly militant" version of Sunni Islam. Atta had lived as a strict Muslim, but after making a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1995, he returned to Germany more fanatical than before. In late 1997, Mohamed Atta told his roommate that he was going to Mecca, but likely he went to Afghanistan instead. Atta went to the mosque around this time "not to pray but to sign his death will." He was known to have attended al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000.

Ramzi bin al-Shibh, also known as "Ramzi Omar", was a Yemeni citizen. In 1995, he came to Germany seeking asylum, claiming to be a political refugee from Sudan. The judge, however, refused his request for asylum, so bin al-Shibh returned to Yemen's Hadramawt region. Bin al-Shibh later obtained a German visa under his real name and came to Germany in 1997. There, he met Atta at a mosque. For two years, Atta and bin al-Shibh roomed together in Germany.

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The cell planned the September 11 attacks in Atta's apartment on Marien Street in Hamburg

In late 1999, bin al-Shibh traveled to Kandahar, where he trained at al-Qaeda training camps, and met others involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. Initial plans for the 9/11 attacks called for bin al-Shibh to be a hijacker pilot, along with Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah. From Hamburg, bin al-Shibh applied for flight training in the U.S. Concurrently, he applied to Aviation Language Services, which provided language training for student pilots. In 2000, in Germany, he applied four times for a U.S. visa, but was refused each time: on May 17, in June, on September 16, and October 25. This visa refusal came out of general concern by U.S. officials that people from Yemen would illegally overstay their visit and seek work in the U.S. His friend, Zakariyah Essabar, was also denied a visa repeatedly. After his failure to enter the U.S., bin al-Shibh assumed more of a "coordinator" role in the plot and as a link between Atta in the U.S. and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Afghanistan.

Marwan al-Shehhi came to Bonn, Germany, in 1996 on a scholarship from the Emirati army to study marine engineering. Al-Shehhi met Atta in 1997, and in 1998 moved to Hamburg to join him and bin al-Shibh. As the son of a religiously trained father, al-Shehhi was religious, well-educated in Islam, and adhered to a strict form of the faith. He had a friendlier, more humorous personality than Atta, however, who was serious and more reclusive.

Ziad Jarrah came from Lebanon to Germany in April 1996, where he enrolled in a junior college in Greifswald. There, he met his girlfriend, Aysel Şengün, a medical student. By late 1996, Jarrah's religious views grew radical. In September 1997, he transferred to the Technical University of Hamburg to study aircraft engineering. That summer he worked at a paint shop factory for Volkswagen in Wolfsburg.

Said Bahaji moved to Germany in 1995. He had been born there, but moved to Morocco at age 9. In 1996, Bahaji enrolled in the electrical engineering program at the technical university. He spent weekdays at a student home and weekends at his aunt Barbara Arens's home. Arens stopped the weekend visits on realizing that his religious beliefs had become more radical.

Selection for September 11 plot

In 1999, this group decided to go to Chechnya to fight. While still in Germany, they allegedly met a man named Khalid al-Masri, who put the group in contact with al-Qaeda. In late 1999, the Hamburg group met with bin Laden, and pledged loyalty to him. They agreed to undertake a highly secret mission, and were told to enroll in flight training. Atta was selected by bin Laden to lead the group. Bin Laden met with Atta several more times for additional instructions. The hijacker selection was entirely decided by bin Laden and Mohammed Atef. The hijackers had not yet met with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. At the time, the hijacking team also included Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who were selected in early 1999 by bin Laden.

Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah all obtained new passports, claiming that their old ones were lost, before applying for U.S. visas. Atta, Jarrah, and bin al-Shibh returned to Hamburg early in 2000, while al-Shehhi went back to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to obtain a new passport and a U.S. visa. Once back in Germany, they made efforts to appear less radical: they distanced themselves from others, stopped attending extremist mosques, and changed their appearances and behaviors.

Arrival in the United States

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The Parkwood Apartments complex in Clairemont, San Diego, where Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi lived from February to May 2000

Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi arrived in Los Angeles on January 15, 2000. On January 18, Marwan al-Shehhi applied for a visa into the U.S. while he was in the UAE. He was the first member of the Hamburg cell to apply for a visa.

By the end of June, Atta, Jarrah, and al-Shehhi left for the U.S. Bin al-Shibh and Essabar wanted to join them, but were denied U.S. visas several times. Bin al-Shibh was denied since he was a Yemeni citizen. He then made several more attempts to obtain a U.S. visa. One such attempt was a $2,200 deposit he sent to the Florida Flight Training Center as a down payment for a similar training course taken by Ziad Jarrah. He used that application as a basis for a new attempt to get a student visa, rather than the visitor visa he previously had sought. On another occasion, he arranged for several thousand dollars to be deposited in his Yemeni bank account, to demonstrate financial wherewithal. After his final attempt failed, he was advised by a consular official that they could not help him, and to stop trying. At that point bin al-Shibh decided to support the cell by sending money to it. Mohammed was making repeated trips to Indonesia and the Philippines at the time. Jarrah nearly abandoned his role in the plot and probably would have been replaced by Zacarias Moussaoui had he done so.

A man named Omar al-Bayoumi had been in San Diego since 1995. He was raising a family and received a monthly stipend from his former employer, an aviation company in Saudi Arabia. He was seen regularly videotaping various locations.Template:Clarification needed Al-Bayoumi also was quick to house immigrants who needed housing. In 2000, he settled in Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. According to al-Hazmi, al-Bayoumi met him and al-Mihdhar at a restaurant in Los Angeles. Al-Bayoumi offered a ride to San Diego after he heard the men speak Arabic. Al-Bayoumi threw the men a welcome party and al-Hazmi, who said he was in the U.S. to learn English, signed a six-month lease.

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The hijackers trained at Montgomery Field in San Diego, and told instructors they wanted to fly Boeings

The first two months of the lease were paid for, yet the men complained that the lease was too expensive. In the spring, al-Hazmi told a friend that someone was going to wire $5,000 to him, and that the money would come from Saudi Arabia. Al-Hazmi told his friend that he had no account. The friend allowed him to use his account, and later found that the money came from a man named "Ali", and that it did not originate in the U.S. The two wanted to take flight lessons, which is why they got the money. A friend took them to Montgomery Field and arranged lessons for them. They took a single flight lesson but did not return. Fereidoun "Fred" Sorbi, the instructor, recalled, "The first day they came in here, they said they want to fly Boeings. We said you have to start slower. You can't just jump right into Boeings."

Flight training

In March 2000, Mohamed Atta contacted the Academy of Lakeland in Florida by e-mail to inquire about flight training, "Dear sir, we are a small group of young men from different Arab countries. Now we are living in Germany since a while for study purposes. We would like to start training for the career of airline professional pilots. In this field we haven't yet any knowledge but we are ready to undergo an intensive training program (up to ATP and eventually higher)." He sent fifty to sixty similar e-mails to other flight training schools in the U.S.

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Huffman Aviation's log of Mohamed Atta's flights at the school

On May 18, 2000, Atta applied for and received a U.S. visa. After obtaining his visa, Atta traveled to Prague before going to the U.S. Atta, along with Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah arrived in Venice, Florida, and visited Huffman Aviation to "check out the facility." They explained that "they came from a flight school in the area, they were not happy and they were looking for another flight school". By December, Atta and al-Shehhi left Huffman Aviation, and on December 21, Atta received a pilot license. Jarrah left Huffman Aviation on January 15, 2001, a month after Atta and Al-Shehhi had done so.

Final preparations

About three weeks before the attacks, the targets were assigned to four teams. The United States Capitol was called "The Faculty of Law". The Pentagon was dubbed "The Faculty of Fine Arts". Mohammed Atta codenamed the World Trade Center "The Faculty of Town Planning".

Financial support

The 9/11 Commission stated that the "9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack" but the "origin of the funds remains unknown." The Commission noted: "we have seen no evidence that any foreign government-or foreign government official-supplied any funding." The report cites a CIA estimate of al-Qaeda's total operating costs prior to September 11, of "around $30 million per year".

In October 2001, that U.S. investigators believed Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, using the alias Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad, sent over $100,000 from Pakistan to Mohamed Atta.

CNN wrote in 2001 that "Investigators said Atta then distributed the funds to conspirators in Florida in the weeks before the deadliest acts of terrorism on U.S. soil that destroyed the World Trade Center, heavily damaged the Pentagon and left thousands dead [...] Syed also is described as a key figure in the funding operation of al-Qaeda, the network headed by suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden."

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review noted that "There are many in Musharraf's government who believe that Saeed Sheikh's power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA."

CNN later confirmed that it was "Ahmed Umar Syed Sheikh, whom [sic] authorities say used a pseudonym to wire $100,000 to suspected hijacker Mohammad Atta, who then distributed the money in the United States."

Soon after the money transfer was discovered, the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, Mahmud Ahmed, resigned from his position. Indian news outlets reported the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating the possibility that Ahmed ordered Saeed Sheikh to send the $100,000 to Atta, while most Western media outlets only reported his connections to the Taliban as the reason for his departure from the ISI.

The Wall Street Journal reported "U.S. authorities sought [Mahmud Ahmed's] removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 [was] wired to WTC hijacker Mohamed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the insistence of Gen Mahmud." The Daily Excelsior reported, "The FBI's examination of the hard disk of the cellphone company Omar Sheikh had subscribed to led to discovery of the "link" between him and the deposed chief of the Pakistani ISI, Mahmud Ahmed. And as the FBI investigators delved deeper, sensational information surfaced with regard to the transfer of $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, one of the pilots who flew a Boeing into the World Trade Center. Mahmud Ahmed, the FBI investigators found, fully knew about the transfer of money to Atta."

According to The Washington Post, "on the morning of Sept. 11, [Porter] Goss and [Bob] Graham were having breakfast with a Pakistani general named Mahmud AhmedTemplate:Snd the soon-to-be-sacked head of Pakistan's intelligence service" On September 12 and 13, Ahmed met with United States Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Senator Joe Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. An agreement on Pakistan's collaboration in the new "war on terror" was negotiated between Ahmed and Armitage.

Ahmed then led a six-member delegation to the Afghan city of Kandahar in order to hold crisis talks with the Taliban leadership, supposedly in an attempt to persuade them to hand over bin Laden.

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Crown Prince Abdullah, de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, which some investigators allege helped plan the attacks

In June 2001, a "high-placed member of a U.S. intelligence agency" told the BBC that "after the [2000] elections, the agencies were told to "back off" investigating the bin Ladens and Saudi royals". In May 2002, former FBI agent Robert Wright, Jr. apologizing to the families of September 11 victims for how his superiors intentionally obstructed his investigation into al-Qaeda's financing. He has claimed "September 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI's International Terrorism Unit", specifically referring to the bureau's hindering of his investigation into Yasin al-Qadi, whom Ross described as a powerful Saudi businessman with extensive financial ties in Chicago. One month after September 11, the U.S. government officially identified Yassin al-Qadi as one of bin Laden's primary financiers and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

In an interview with Computerworld Magazine, a former business associate described his relationship with al-Qadi: "I met him a few times and talked to him a few times on the telephone. He never talked to me about violence. Instead, he talked very highly of his relationship with [former President] Jimmy Carter and [Vice President] Dick Cheney."

The Muwafaq Foundation, which U.S. authorities confirmed was an arm of bin Laden's terror organization, was headed by al-Qadi, who was also known as the owner of Ptech—a company that has supplied high-tech computer systems to the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the United States Congress, the United States Army, the Navy, the Air Force, NATO, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the White House. Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counter-terrorism agent, commented: "For someone like [al-Qadi] to be involved in a capacity, in an organization, a company that has access to classified information, that has access to government open or classified computer systems, would be of grave concern." Also sitting on Ptech's board of directors was Yacub Mirza, "a senior official of major radical Islamic organizations that had been linked by the U.S. government to terrorism." In addition, Hussein Ibrahim, the Vice President and Chief Scientist of Ptech, was vice chairman of a defunct investment group called BMI, a company the FBI had named as a conduit used by al-Qadi to launder money to Hamas militants.

According to Senator Bob Graham, then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, "Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the U.S. that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship", as reported by the Miami Herald: "And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he made clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that the administration blocked from release, despite pleas from leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees."