Osama bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian-born Islamist dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, he participated in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union and supported the activities of the Bosnian mujahideen during the Yugoslav Wars. After issuing his declaration of war against the Americans in 1996, Bin Laden began advocating attacks targeting U.S. assets in several countries, and supervised al-Qaeda's execution of the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001.
John Patrick O'Neill was an American counter-terrorism expert who worked as a special agent and eventually a special agent in charge in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1995, O'Neill began to intensely study the roots of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing after he assisted in the capture of Ramzi Yousef, who was the leader of that plot.
The Maktab al-Khidamat, also Maktab Khadamāt al-Mujāhidīn al-'Arab, also known as the Afghan Services Bureau, was founded in 1984 by Abdullah Azzam, Wa'el Hamza Julaidan, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to raise funds and recruit foreign mujahideen for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. MAK became the forerunner to al-Qaeda and was instrumental in creating the fundraising and recruitment network that benefited Al-Qaeda during the 1990s.
Michael F. Scheuer, is an American former intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, blogger, author, commentator and former adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. One assignment during his 22-year career was serving as Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station from 1996 to 1999. He also served as Special Advisor to the Chief of Alec Station from September 2001 to November 2004.
Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl is a Sudanese militant and former associate of Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s. Al-Fadl was recruited for the Afghan war through the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn. In 1988, he joined Al-Qaeda and took an oath of fealty to Bin Laden. After a dispute with Bin Laden, al-Fadl defected and became an informant to the United States government on al-Qaeda's activities.
Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed is a double agent who worked for both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Egyptian Islamic Jihad simultaneously, reporting on the workings of each for the benefit of the other.
Peter Lampert Bergen is an American journalist, author, and producer who is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast In the Room with Peter Bergen.
Afghan Arabs were the Arab Muslims who immigrated to Afghanistan and joined the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. The term does not refer to the history of Arabs in Afghanistan before the 1970s. Despite being referred to as Afghans, they originated from the Arab world and did not hold Afghan citizenship.
Lawrence Wright is an American writer and journalist, who is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Wright is best known as the author of the 2006 nonfiction book Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Wright is also known for his work with documentarian Alex Gibney who directed film versions of Wright's one man show My Trip to Al-Qaeda and his book Going Clear. His 2020 novel, The End of October, a thriller about a pandemic, was released in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, to generally positive reviews.
The Battle of Jaji was fought during the Soviet–Afghan War between Soviet Army units, and their allies of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against Maktab al-Khidamat in Paktia Province. This battle occurred in May 1987, during the first stage of withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The objective was to relieve a besieged garrison at Ali Sher, and cut off supply lines to the Mujahideen from Pakistan. The battle is primarily known for the participation of the Arab foreign fighter and future founder of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, who acquired his reputation as a divine jihadist warrior as a result of the Mujahideen victory during this battle. Bin Laden led a group of some 50 Arab foreign fighters during this battle, of which at least 13 were killed in action.
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim is a Kurdish co-founder of the Islamist terrorist network al-Qaeda. He was arrested on 16 September 1998 near Munich. On 20 December 1998, he was extradited to the United States, where he was charged with participating in the 1998 United States embassy bombings.
Osama bin Laden, a militant Islamist and co-founder of al-Qaeda, in conjunction with several other Islamic militant leaders, issued two fatawa – in 1996 and then again in 1998—that military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdraw support for Israel and withdraw military forces from Islamic countries. He was indicted in United States federal court for his alleged involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list until his death.
Osama bin Laden took ideological guidance from prominent militant Islamist scholars and ideologues from the classical to contemporary eras, such as Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Sayyid Qutb, Nizamuddin Shamzai and Abdullah Azzam. During his middle and high school years, bin Laden was educated in Al-Thager Model School, a public school in Jeddah run by Islamist exiles of the Muslim Brotherhood; during which he was immensely influenced by pan-Islamist ideals and displayed strict religious commitment. As a teenager, bin Laden attended and led Muslim Brotherhood-run "Awakening" camps held on desert outskirts that intended to raise the youth in religious values, instil martial spirit and sought spiritual seclusion from "the corruptions" of modernity and rapidly urbanising society of the 1970s in Saudi Arabia.
Osama bin Laden (1957–2011), a militant and founder of Al-Qaeda in 1988, believed Muslims should kill civilians and military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdrew support for Israel and withdrew military forces from Islamic countries. He was indicted in United States federal court for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Ali H. Soufan is a Lebanese-American former FBI agent who was involved in a number of high-profile anti-terrorism cases both in the United States and around the world. A 2006 New Yorker article described Soufan as coming closer than anyone to preventing the September 11 attacks and implied that he would have succeeded had the CIA been willing to share information with him. He resigned from the FBI in 2005 after publicly chastising the CIA for not sharing intelligence with him which could have prevented the attacks.
Born in Syria, Mohammed Loay Bayazid is an American citizen alleged to have been a founding member of al-Qaeda, although he has cooperated with American authorities and claims his role in the group has been over-stated.
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.
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad, formerly called simply Islamic Jihad and the Liberation Army for Holy Sites, originally referred to as al-Jihad, and then the Jihad Group, or the Jihad Organization, was an Egyptian Islamist group active from the late 1970's until its 2001 merger with Al-Qaeda. It was long considered an affiliate of Al-Qaeda and under worldwide embargo by the United Nations. It was also banned by several individual governments worldwide. The group is a proscribed terrorist group organization in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The Looming Tower is an American drama television miniseries, based on Lawrence Wright's 2006 book of the same name, which premiered on Hulu on February 28, 2018. The 10-episode drama series was created and executive produced by Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney, and Wright. Futterman also acted as the series's showrunner and Gibney directed the first episode. The series stars an ensemble cast featuring Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Wrenn Schmidt, Bill Camp, Louis Cancelmi, Virginia Kull, Ella Rae Peck, Sullivan Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Peter Sarsgaard.
