The Phoenix Memo is a letter sent to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001, by FBI Special Agent Kenneth Williams, recommending the assembling of a worldwide listing of civil aviation schools. [1] Williams, then stationed in Phoenix, Arizona, was investigating students at some of these schools for possible terrorist links.
According to Williams, the purpose of the memo was to:
advise the Bureau and New York of the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation universities and colleges. Phoenix has observed an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest who are attending or who have attended civil aviation universities and colleges in the State of Arizona.
The recommendations outlined by Williams were ignored or put aside because of other concerns. The memo was seen by at least one dozen officials of the FBI, including John P. O'Neill, but it was never passed to acting director Thomas J. Pickard, his successor Robert Mueller or the Central Intelligence Agency. [2] In addition, the existence of the memo was not made known to President George W. Bush and his senior national security staff until May 2002.
Mueller told the U.S. Congress in an emotional hearing in May 2002 that failure to act on the memo was the result of deficits in the FBI’s analytical capabilities. [3]
The memo became the subject of another communiqué in June 2002, when FBI Agent Coleen Rowley took advantage of the federal Whistleblower Protection Act provisions to inform FBI Director Robert Mueller that his public statements about lack of “advance knowledge” by the bureau had no basis in fact. In her memo, Rowley wrote about the alleged suppression of the investigation concerning Zacarias Moussaoui. [4]
Hani Salih Hasan Hanjour was a Saudi Arabian terrorist who was the hijacker-pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, crashing the plane into the Pentagon as part of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Khalid Muhammad Abdallah al-Mihdhar was a Saudi terrorist hijacker. He was one of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon as part of the 11 September attacks.
Nawaf Muhammed Salin al-Hazmi was a Saudi terrorist hijacker who was one of five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which they crashed into the Pentagon as part of the September 11 attacks.
Ramzi Mohammed Abdullah bin al-Shibh is a Yemeni citizen currently being held by the U.S. as an enemy combatant detainee at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He is accused of being a "key facilitator for the September 11 attacks" in 2001 in the United States.
Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah was a citizen of Saudi Arabia and a senior member of Al-Qaeda. He was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in the United States.
Robert G. Wright Jr. is an FBI agent who has criticized the FBI's counterterrorist activities in the 1990s, when he worked in the Chicago division on terrorists with links to the Middle East, especially on the issue of money laundering. Specifically, he worked on project Vulgar Betrayal, which allegedly implicated Yasin al-Qadi. He wrote a detailed book which the FBI prevented him from publishing with threats of criminal prosecution. He complained that "FBI management intentionally and repeatedly thwarted and obstructed my attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation to identify and neutralize terrorists."
Abderraouf bin Habib bin Yousef Jdey is a Canadian citizen, who was found swearing to die as a shaheed (martyr) on a series of videotapes found in the rubble of Mohammed Atef's house in Afghanistan in 2002.
Omar al-Bayoumi is a Saudi national linked to two of the 9/11 hijackers in the United States, though he says he simply befriended the pair rather than ran them as agents. Files of the U.S. FBI dating to before the attacks demonstrate that he was a Saudi Arabian intelligence agent. An FBI report declassified in September 2021 lays out evidence that al-Bayoumi had links to known terrorists, provided significant support to 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar upon their arrival in the U.S., and communicated with a key logistics facilitator for Osama bin Laden, each time immediately following significant logistics support to Hazmi and Mihdhar. An FBI report declassified in March 2022 lays out evidence that "there is a 50/50 chance [al-Bayoumi] had advanced knowledge the 9/11 attacks were to occur." from the two Islamists he befriended that were involved in plotting 9/11. al-Bayoumi also helped the Islamists find housing in San Diego.
On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists took control of four commercial aircraft and used them as suicide weapons in a series of four coordinated acts of terrorism to strike the World Trade Center in New York City, The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and an additional target in Washington, D.C. Two aircraft hit the World Trade Center while the third hit the Pentagon. A fourth plane did not arrive at its target, but crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after a passenger revolt. The intended target is believed to have been the United States Capitol. As a result, 2,977 victims were killed, making it the deadliest foreign attack on U.S. soil, exceeding Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, which killed 2,335 members of the United States Armed Forces and 68 civilians. The effort was carefully planned by al-Qaeda, which sent 19 terrorists to take over Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 aircraft, operated by American Airlines and United Airlines.
Richard Behar is an American investigative journalist. Since 2012, he has been the Contributing Editor of Investigations for Forbes magazine. From 1982 to 2004, he wrote on the staffs of Forbes, Time and Fortune. Behar's work has also been featured on BBC, CNN, PBS, FoxNews.com and Fast Company magazine. He coordinates Project Klebnikov, a media alliance to probe the Moscow murder of Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov. He is the author of Madoff: The Final Word, a book about Bernard Madoff. Behar is editor of Mideast Dig.
Coleen Rowley is an American former FBI special agent and whistleblower. Rowley is well known for testifying as to concerns regarding the FBI ignoring information of a suspected terrorist during 9/11, which led to a two-year investigation by the Department of Justice.
PENTTBOM is the codename for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe into the September 11 attacks of 2001, the largest criminal inquiry in the FBI's history. Its name stands for "Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing Investigation". The investigation was launched on September 11, 2001, and involved 4,000 special agents and 3,000 professional employees.
The Khalden training camp was one of the oldest and best-known military training camps in Afghanistan. It was located in the mountains of eastern Paktia Province, near Tora Bora.
Zacarias Moussaoui is a French member of al-Qaeda who pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to conspiring to kill citizens of the United States as part of the 9/11 attacks. He is serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole at the Federal ADX Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. Moussaoui is the only person ever convicted in a U.S. court in connection with the September 11 attacks.
Various conspiracy theories allege that certain institutions or individuals had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001. Some of the primary debates include whether the Bush administration or the United States Armed Forces had awareness of the planned attack methods, the precise volume of intelligence that American agencies had regarding al-Qaeda activities inside the United States, whether the put options placed on United Airlines and American Airlines and other trades indicated foreknowledge, and why the identities of the traders have never been made public.
This page lists trials related to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
At around 9:30 pm on September 11, 2001, George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) told President George W. Bush and U.S. senior officials that the CIA's Counterterrorism Center had determined that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for the September 11 attacks. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation connected the hijackers to al-Qaeda, a militant Salafist Islamist multi-national organization. In a number of video, audio, interview and printed statements, senior members of al-Qaeda have also asserted responsibility for organizing the September 11 attacks.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., by the al-Qaeda terrorist group, a number of investigations were conducted to determine what intelligence may have existed before the attacks and whether this information was ignored by authorities.
Bruce J. Gebhardt is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent who served as Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Aaron Mortimer Zebley is an American attorney and former FBI special agent who was the deputy special counsel of the Special Counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller. He was the former chief of staff to Mueller at the FBI. Zebley followed Mueller from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the law firm WilmerHale and also subsequently left when Mueller resigned to become the special counsel, along with James L. Quarles.
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