Anglonautes > English > vocabulary > terrorism > 11 September 2001

Les anglonautes

TIME 09-11-2001 Cover:

The World Trade Center Twin Towers burning

after terrorists crashed two commerical airplanes into the buildings.

Photograph by Lyle Owerko-Polaris.

Location: US

Date taken: September 11, 2001

Photographer: Lyle Owerko

Life Images

Edition: U.S. Vol. 158 No. 12 Sep. 14, 2001
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20010914,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000761,00.html
Table of Contents > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601010914,00.html

Steve Bell

The Guardian

11.9.2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,554042,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/archive/0,14955,1284265,00.html

Fact Box

Timeline from 9/11 Commission Report

8:46:40 — American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the WTC’s North Tower
(Note: National Institute of Standard Technology report says 8:46:30.)
9:03:11 — United Airlines Flight 175 flies into 2 WTC [the South Tower]
(Note: N.I.S.T. report says 9:02:59.)
9:37 — American Airlines Flight 77 hits the west wall of the Pentagon
9:58:59 — South Tower collapses
10:03:11 — United Airlines Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania
10:28:25 — WTC’s North Tower collapses

Time from impact to collapse:

1 World Trade Center: 102 minutes
2 World Trade Center: 56 minutes

Number of dead: 2,992

World Trade Center: 2,759 (includes 10 hijackers and 157 passengers and crew members)
Pentagon: 125 (includes 5 hijackers and 59 passengers and crew members)
Flight 93: 44 (includes 4 hijackers)

First responders killed at the World Trade Center:

New York Police Department: 23
Fire Department of New York: 343
Port Authority Police: 37
Emergency Medical Service: 3

The flights

American Airlines Flight 11
From: Boston, Mass. (Logan Airport)
To: Los Angeles, Calif.
Number on board: 92
Crashed into North Tower of World Trade Center

United Airlines Flight 175
From: Boston, Mass. (Logan Airport)
To: Los Angeles, Calif.
Number on board: 65
Crashed into South Tower of World Trade Center

American Airlines Flight 77
From: Washington, D.C. (Dulles Airport)
To: Los Angeles, Calif.
Number on board: 64
Crashed into the Pentagon

United Airlines Flight 93
From: Newark, N.J.
To: San Francisco, Calif.
Number on board: 44
Crashed into rural Pennsylvania (southeast of Pittsburgh)

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sept_11_2001/attacks/index.html
copy September 9 2009

"U.S. Attacked," Potomac News and Manassas Journal Messenger (Manassas, Virginia) September 11, 2001.
Courtesy of Potomac News and Manassas Journal Messenger.
Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/images/sep0018.jpg
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/911-serial.html

"America's Bloodiest Day," Honolulu Advertiser
(Honolulu, Hawaii)
September 12, 2001.
Courtesy of Honolulu Advertiser.
Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/images/sep0006.jpg
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/911-serial.html

A man stands in the rubble,

and calls out asking if anyone needs help,

shortly after the collapse of the first World Trade Center Tower

11 September, 2001, in New York City.

DOUG KANTER/AFP/Getty Images

The Boston Globe > The Big Picture > Seven years since -- looking back and forward on 9/11

September 10, 2008
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/seven_years_since_looking_back.html

Wikipedia > The Pentagon, Sept. 14 2001
http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/Sep2001/010914-F-8006R-002.html

Edition: U.S. Vol. 158 No. 16 October 8, 2001
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20011008,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000933,00.html
Table of contents > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601011008,00.html

Edition: U.S. Vol. 158 No. 13 Sep. 24, 2001
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20010924,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000870,00.html
Table of contents > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601010924,00.html

Anthony Suau Time 2001
http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/aftershock/

Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden (R)
and Ayman Al-Zawahiri are shown in this file photo
of leaflets that were dropped over Afghanistan in 2001.
The CIA officer who led the first American unit into Afghanistan
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said on May 4 2005 that his orders included an unusual assignment:
bring back Osama bin Laden's head on ice.
Gary Schroen and his six-member CIA team arrived in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley
two weeks after bin Laden's al Qaeda network orchestrated the attacks on Washington and New York,
prompting the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

CIA agents told to deliver bin Laden's head on ice
R Wed May 4, 2005 6:56 PM ET
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=
2005-05-04T225601Z_01_N04302534_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-BINLADEN-DC.XML

TIME cover 11-26-2001

w. terrorist Osama Bin Laden in crosshairs.

(from Visual News/Getty)

Date taken: November 26, 2001

Life Images

TIME cover 10-01-2001

Al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden, from AP.

Location: US

Date taken: October 2001

Life Images

Edition: U.S. Vol. 158 No. 15 Oct. 1, 2001
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20011001,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000901,00.html
Table of contents > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601011001,00.html

terror

global terrorism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism

Inside Obama’s War on Terrorism

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/us/05preview.html

horror

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/opinion/l17terror.html

fear
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/opinion/06thu1.html

National Counterterrorism Center

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/us/30intel.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/us/politics/17leiter.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/magazine/17Terror-t.html

Cartoons > Cagle > Times Square Terror Mat 2010

http://www.cagle.com/news/NYCTerrorist/main.asp

Faisal Shahzad > bomb plot / bomb scare / Times Square Bomb Attempt NYC, USA May 1, 2010

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/faisal_shahzad/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/05/nyregion/shahzad-timeline.html

bomb plot / bomb scare / Times Square Bomb Attempt NYC, USA May 1, 2010

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/times_square_bomb_attempt_may_1_2010/index.html

bomb squad

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/nyregion/06bridge.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/nyregion/03squad.html

9/11 conspiracy theorist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/05/us-national-security-usa

Abu Ayyub al-Masri,
an Egyptian, assumed command of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in June 2006
after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who oversaw the early growth of the organization,
a decentralized collection of semi-autonomous terrorist groups
that has claimed responsibility for scores of suicide attacks and car bombings across Iraq.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/abu_ayyub_almasri/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/world/middleeast/20baghdad.html

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda_in_mesopotamia/index.html

9/11 rescue workers face court battle to pay for healthcare March 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/12/september-11-rescue-workers-healthcare

Aerial Photos of Trade Center on 9/11 Released January 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/nyregion/11groundzero.html

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen,
was charged with trying to blow up a transcontinental airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/umar_farouk_abdulmutallab/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/world/africa/17abdulmutallab.html

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/ahmed_khalfan_ghailani/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/nyregion/23ghailani.html

Najibullah Zazi
charged on Sept. 24, 2009,
with one count of conspiring with others to use weapons of mass destruction

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/z/najibullah_zazi/index.html

Al-Qaida / Al Qaeda

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/al-qaida
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html

US kills al-Qaida target in Somalia helicopter assault 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/15/al-qaida-target-somalia-killed

9/11 tragedy pager intercepts

From 3AM on Wednesday November 25, 2009, until 3AM the following day (US east coast time),
WikiLeaks released half a million US national text pager intercepts.
The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

The messages were broadcasted "live" to the global community — sychronized to the time of day they were sent.
The first message was from 3AM September 11, 2001, five hours before the first attack, and the last, 24 hours later.

Text pagers are usualy carried by persons operating in an official capacity.
Messages in the archive range from Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police Department exchanges,
to computers reporting faults at investment banks inside the World Trade Center

The archive is a completely objective record of the defining moment of our time.
We hope that its entrance into the historical record will lead
to a nuanced understanding of how this event led to death, opportunism and war.
http://911.wikileaks.org/

Al-Qaida: eight years after 9/11 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/10/al-qaida-terrorism-bin-laden

The New York Times > Lens >
Showcase: The World, as of 9/10/01 September 11, 2009, 12:00 am

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/showcase-49/?hp

Remembering September 11th September 11, 2009

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/remembering_september_11th.html

Obama Speaks at 9/11 Memorial Service 2009

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/09/11/us/politics/
1247464528285/obama-speaks-at-9-11-memorial-service.html

9/11 Commemoration 8th Anniversary of 9/11 Terrorist Attacks 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/09/11/us/20090911-memorial-slideshow_index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/09/12/nyregion/0912-911_index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/us/12capital.html

Sept. 11 Memorials

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/nyregion/07steel.html
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/09/06/nyregion/STEELslideshow_index.html
http://documents.nytimes.com/letters-requesting-world-trade-center-artifacts#p=1
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/w/world_trade_center_nyc/index.html

Ali al-Fakhiri / Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/may/13/ibn-al-sheikh-al-libi

Osama bin Laden

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/osamabinladen

al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/29/world/AP-ML-Bin-Laden-Tape.html

al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/03/hunt-bin-laden-waziristan
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/asia/04britain.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/world/14tape.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/world/middleeast/04binladen.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/25/osama-bin-laden-capture
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/
osama-bin-laden-tape-calls-for-jihad-against-israel-1350686.html

The 9/11 accused
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali,
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/08/september-11-accused-profiles

Khalid Shaikh / Sheikh Mohammed > Alleged 9/11 mastermind goes to court 2010-2008

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/khalid_shaikh_mohammed/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/opinion/15thu1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17menin.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/opinion/l17terror.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/us/14terror.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSNASU6040120080606
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-06-05-gitmo-trial_N.htm
http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/usatoday/docs/terrorism/usksmetal20808chrgs.pdf

National security letters / administrative subpoenas
that can be issued
under the USA Patriot Act in terror and spy investigations 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Senate-FBI.html

U.S. Department of Defense / Pentagon > Sept. 11 Co-Conspirators Charged 2008

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11682
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-11-sept11-trial_N.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/washington/11cnd-gitmo.html

Al-Qaida 2008

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-05-terror-threat_N.htm

U.S. Department of Defense / Pentagon 2008

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0144703120080201

eavesdropping

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/opinion/18thu1.html

Wiretapping and Other Eavesdropping Devices and Methods

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/w/
wiretapping_and_other_eavesdropping_devices_and_methods/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/opinion/17fri1.html
http://documents.nytimes.com/federal-report-on-the-president-s-surveillance-program#p=1

Weapons of Mass Destruction WMD 2008

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0144703120080201

Pentagon 2007

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1263087820071212

Jose Padilla 2008

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-22-padilla-sentencing_N.htm

Al-Qaida 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,2167923,00.html

Timeline > Al-Qaida
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/page/0,,852377,00.html

The Guardian > Special report > Al-Qaida
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/0,,797383,00.html

Osama / Usama bin Laden 2007
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/laden.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,2167923,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,,2166681,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2007/sep/11/bin.laden.video
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,,2166858,00.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-09-11-bin-laden_N.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,849295,00.html

The New York Times > 6th Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/11/us/20070911_ANNIVERSARY_SS_index.html

USA Today > Photo gallery: America remembers 9/11 six years later 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/news/gallery/2007/n070911_9/11/flash.htm

The Guardian > 9/11 anniversary (12 pictures) 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/sep/11/usnews.internationalnews?picture=330720576

The State Museum’s significant collection of material from the World Trade Center
and objects from the international response to the events of September 11, 2001,
tell the story of that day and its aftermath.
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/wtc/

New York Times Topics > Sept. 11, 2001
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sept_11_2001/index.html

New York Times > Perspectives on 9/11
To mark the anniversary of 9/11, the Op-Ed page asked five artists
to draw and write about one of the places where hijacked airplanes crashed six years ago
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/10/opinion/20070911_OPART_SLIDESHOW_index.html

Here Is New York 2007
The new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society is not a commemoration.
“Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11,” which opens on Tuesday,
is exclusively about memory, which doesn’t diminish its power.
In two galleries, 1,500 inkjet-printed photos taken six years ago during those apocalyptic days
are mounted with simple stationery clips. They are reminders of hidden pressure points and buried sensations.
The photos, without credits, titles or dates, from 790 contributors, range from the amateur to the professional,
from the clearly posed composition to the frenzied snap of a moment in which hysteria had to be kept at bay.
— Edward Rothstein
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/07/arts/20070911_SEPT11EXHIBIT_SLIDESHOW_index.html

New York Times > City room > Sept. 11 and Ground Zero 2007
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/category/sept-11-and-ground-zero/

9/11 history 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-28-911-archives_N.htm

Sept.11 > human remains uncovered at WTC site 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-21-wtc-bones_x.htm

Sept. 11: Five Years Later > NYT > Complete Coverage
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/index.html

September 11, 2001 attacks / the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/september11
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sept_11_2001/attacks/index.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/0,11209,597544,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/11/newsid_2514000/2514627.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/americas/2001/day_of_terror/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,,601220,00.html

The Hijackers
A series of interactive graphics from Sept. 2001 to June 2002
looked at the identities of the hijackers,
the money trail and other issues in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2001/09/12/us/terror_SUSPECTS_graphic.html

102 Minutes: Inside the Towers
A reconstruction of the harrowing final minutes
inside the north and south towers of the World Trade Center
on Sept. 11, 2001, narrated by reporters of The New York Times.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sept_11_2001/attacks/index.html

Fatal Confusion: The Emergency Response
Emergency personnel in the World Trade Center before its collapse.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sept_11_2001/attacks/index.html

Sept. 11 Dispatches
New York City released tapes of emergency calls
made on the morning of the attacks at the World Trade Center.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sept_11_2001/attacks/index.html

How the Towers Stood and Fell
The World Trade Center's towers employed many innovative technologies and techniques.
On Sept. 11, 2001, some of them helped the towers survive attack.
Others led to their collapse.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sept_11_2001/attacks/index.html

9/11 > Library of Congress documents
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/911-home.html

9/11 > Library of Congress > Documentary photographs
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/911-docphotos.html

on 11 September 2001

9/11 (American format date)
http://www.911digitalarchive.org/
http://www.september11news.com/

September 11 (September the eleventh)
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2005/05-007.html
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/911-comics.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1548507,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,12269,1301806,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1243079,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/0,11209,597544,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gall/0,8542,550207,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gall/0,8542,551227,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,601388,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/aftershock/index.html
http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/shattered/1.html
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020909/retrospective/
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020909/index.html
http://www.legacy.com/nytimes/sept11.asp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1561075.stm

The Guardian > special report > 9/11
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/0,,597544,00.html

9/11 > The Guardian > interactive guides > how the tragedy unfolded
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/guides/0,,605016,00.html

9/11 hijackers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1266317,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1175675,00.html

9/11 > Mohamed Atta
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2383229,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2382788,00.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-10-01-sept11-video_x.htm
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1093694,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,,556630,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,,564783,00.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2001/10/04/portland.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,,601226,00.html

9/11 > Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-14-gitmo-confession_N.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,2034383,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,2034561,00.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-09-20-9-11-guantanamo_x.htm

Bojinka Jetliners Bomb Plot > Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/world/europe/11manila.html

9/11 > United Airlines Flight 175 > WTC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_175

9/11 > American Airlines Flight 77 > Pentagon blast
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-16-pentagon-video_x.htm

9/11 > United Airlines Flight 93
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475276/
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/ua93.victims.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/17/flight193.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/victims-capsules.htm

United 93: full transcript
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,,1753157,00.html

Pakistan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2177745,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2007/sep/21/osama
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1266317,00.html

Cagle > best cartoons 2001
http://www.cagle.com/news/Bestof2001/main.asp

9/11 political cartoons: early reaction
http://www.authentichistory.com/images/attackonamerica/cartoons/911cartoons01.html

911 calls from World Trade Center attack
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-30-sept11-911-calls_x.htm

The New York Times > Complete Coverage > The 9/11 records
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/

Vast Archive Yields New View of 9/11
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/13/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/13records.html

All documents
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/
20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html

Oral Histories of 9/11 Friday
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/nyregion/12records.html

Oral histories of rescue workers and audio of dispatch transmissions
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/
20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_01.html

audio dispatches
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812
_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_04.html

9/11 inquiries > the NORAD tapes
http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,,1835906,00.html

The Guardian Special Report > 9/11
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/0,,597544,00.html

Twin Towers / World Trade Center WTC
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/magazine/20020908_911_TOWERS/towers.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/w/world_trade_center_nyc/index.html

The falling man
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man

World Trade Center (WTC) > 1993 attack / 2001 attack
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/nyregion/20center.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/nyregion/19wtc.html

ground zero
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/nyregion/12lives.html

Ground Zero cross
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-05-cross-moved_x.ht

First steel column for WTC skyscraper installed at ground zero December 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-20-freedom-tower_x.htm

Suspect in 5 anthrax-letter deaths kills himself August 2008
http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-08-01-1656619042_x.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0135345720080802

anthrax letters 2001
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/conditions/11/25/anthrax.investigation/index.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/articles/anthrax_111701.html
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/11/09/rec.fbi.anthrax.letter/index.html
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01.htm
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/102301.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/17/politics/17anthrax.html

9.11 James Nachtwey Times 2001
http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/shattered/

9.11 James Nachtwey Times 2001
http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/shattered/4.html

Will Eisner.

Reality 9/11, 2001.

Ink brush, ink wash, opaque white and plastic overlay with tempera.
Published in Alternative Comics' 9-11 Emergency Relief.
Gift of the artist. Prints and Photographs Division (125)

U.S. to Spend Billions More to Alter Security Systems NYT

8.5.2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/national/08screen.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2087984/
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.

A Guide to the Patriot Act, Part 1
Should you be scared of the Patriot Act?
By Dahlia Lithwick and Julia Turner

Posted Monday, Sept. 8, 2003, at 8:06 AM PT

TSA
Transportation Security Administration
http://www.tsa.gov/
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-10-03-cameras_N.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2006-11-01-screeners_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2006-09-25-airlines-liquids_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2006-05-18-shoe-scanner_x.htm

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/foreign_intelligence_surveillance_act_fisa/index.html

U.S. Customs and Border Protection
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/customs_and_border_protection_bureau/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/us/06cellphone.html

Federal Air Marshal Service / Air marshals
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-31-air-marshal_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-20-air-marshals_x.htm

armed sky marshals on flights

armed undercover sky marshal

bomb-sniffing dog
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/nyregion/04effects.html

Automated Targeting System or ATS > Terror ratings for all US travellers 2006
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2482853,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1962299,00.html

be indicted on U.S. federal charges of aiding al-Qaeda 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-11-man-indicted_x.htm

Patriot Act 2001
An Act to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world,
to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/usa_patriot_act/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/opinion/08thu1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/opinion/08thu1.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-08-patriot-act_N.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-02-02-patriot-act_x.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/politics/05patriot.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/patriotact/
http://www.lifeandliberty.gov/
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/resources/17343res20031114.html
http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/terrorism/hr3162.pdf
http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:HR03162:@@@L&summ2=m&
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/PATRIOT/
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/ifissues/usapatriotact.htm
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12126&c=207
http://slate.msn.com/id/2087984/

House of Representatives > Resolution
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:hr895ih.txt.pdf

minister for counter-terrorism (FA)

The Department of Homeland Security

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary

Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/us/29shooting.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-20-moussaoui_x.htm

deter terror
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/national/10terror.html

constitutionality of random bag searches
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-11-randomsearches_x.htm

fight terrorism

antiterrorism equipment
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/national/08screen.html

tighten security
http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,5860,848249,00.html

evacuation procedures
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-11-cities-evacuations_x.htm

surveillance
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-18-gonzales_x.htm

screening at airports
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/us/04webtsa.html

security breach
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/nyregion/04newark.html

terror

terrorist
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/opinion/04sheehan.html

FBI > Most wanted terrorists
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/fugitives.htm

terrorism > suspect > Fifth Amendment > Supreme Court > Miranda

U.S. Supreme Court
MIRANDA v. ARIZONA, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)
384 U.S. 436
MIRANDA v. ARIZONA.
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF ARIZONA.
No. 759.
Argued February 28 - March 1, 1966.
Decided June 13, 1966.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=US&vol=384&invol=436
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16sun1.html

cell

sleeper cells 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-09-11-mcconnell_N.htm

jihad
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/
middle-east/osama-bin-laden-tape-calls-for-jihad-against-israel-1350686.html

jihadist
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2223707,00.html

9/11 > Afghanistan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/0,1284,548335,00.html

9/11 > Iraq
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/0,2759,423009,00.html

Hollywood studios > 9 /11 films
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1551342,00.html

Bojinka Jetliners Bomb Plot
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/terrorism/bojinka_jetliners_bomb_plot/index.html

Theodore J. Kaczynski / Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/k/theodore_j_kaczynski/index.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/15/my-brother-the-unabomber
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/us/12unabomber.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/national/22unabomber.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.htm

Oklahoma bombing 1995
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/11/oklahoma-bombing-15-years-on
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,12269,1463292,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/mcveigh/0,7368,488144,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/mcveigh/story/0,7369,488302,00.html

Oklahoma bombing > Timothy James McVeigh
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/m/timothy_james_mcveigh/index.html

Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman
is charged with planning to bomb the World Trade Centre 26 August 1993
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,12269,1291386,00.html

Lockerbie plane bombing 1988

On 21 December 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded onboard Pan Am flight 103,
destroying the aircraft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie and killing 270 people

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/lockerbie
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,12269,1378098,00.html

The Threat to Miranda

May 14, 2010
The New York Times

For nearly nine years, the threat of international terrorism has fueled a government jackhammer, cutting away at long-established protections of civil liberties. It has been used to justify warrantless wiretapping, an expansion of the state secrets privilege in federal lawsuits, the use of torture, and the indefinite detention of people labeled enemy combatants. None of these actions were necessary to fight terrorism, and neither is a dubious Obama administration proposal to loosen the Miranda rules when questioning terror suspects and to delay presenting suspects to a judge.

A change to a fundamental constitutional protection like Miranda should not be tossed out on a Sunday talk show with few details and a gauzy justification. If Attorney General Eric Holder really wants to change the rules, he owes the public a much better explanation.

At the most basic level, it is not even clear that the warning requirement can be changed, except from the bench. The Miranda warning was the creation of the Supreme Court as a way of enforcing the Fifth Amendment. Since 1966, it has reduced coerced confessions and reminded suspects that they have legal rights.

The Rehnquist court warned against meddling with the rule in a 2000 decision forbidding Congress to overrule the warnings to suspects, which over the decades became an ingrained law enforcement practice.

In 1984, the court itself added a “public safety” exception to Miranda. If there is an overriding threat to public safety and officers need information from a suspect to deal with it, the court said, the officers can get that information before administering the Miranda warnings and still use it in court. We disagreed with that decision, but in the years since, the exception has become a useful tool to deal with imminent threats.

The question now is whether the exception needs to be enlarged to deal with the threat of terrorism. Clearly an unexploded bomb or a terror conspiracy would constitute a safety threat under the existing rule. But must investigators “Mirandize” a suspect before asking about his financing sources, his experience at overseas training camps, his methods of communication? In a world that is differently dangerous than it was in 1984, these seem to fit logically under the existing exception, without requiring a fundamental change to the rule.

Miranda does not seem to be an impediment to good antiterror police work, as Mr. Holder himself noted on Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee. Investigators questioned Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the Times Square bombing attempt, for three or four hours before giving him a Miranda warning, receiving useful information both before and after the warning. He readily waived his right to a quick hearing before a judge.

Investigators also questioned the suspect in the attempted airliner bombing last Christmas for 50 minutes before his rights were read. After both incidents, there were alarmist and unproven outcries from some politicians that Miranda was a hurdle to the cases.

We hope the Obama administration is not simply reacting to shortsighted pressure. To allay those concerns, it must quickly explain precisely what changes it wants to make, what time limits would be set on any new exceptions, and why the existing rules are inadequate.

The Threat to Miranda, NYT, 14.5.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16sun1.html

What happened to Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi?

The death in a Libyan prison of the al-Qaida suspect
reminds us of his shameful mistreatment at American hands

Wednesday 13 May 2009
12.44 BST
Guardian.co.uk
Moazzam Begg
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 12.44 BST on Wednesday 13 May 2009.
It was last updated at 12.45 BST on Wednesday 13 May 2009.

"From Allah we come and to Him shall we return." Thus begin hundreds of comments on leading Arabic language news sites today, in response to the death of Ali al-Fakhiri – better known to the world as Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. But the report of the alleged suicide in his cell in a Libyan prison, where he had been held since 2006, has been met widely with scepticism.

His capture in November 2001 wasn't announced officially until January 2002, when US media hailed al-Libi's capture as that of the highest ranking member of al-Qaida in US military custody. By the time I was kidnapped and detained by US officials and taken to the US detention facility in Kandahar, I had already heard rumours that al-Libi had been transported by the Americans in a coffin to some unspecified location. And when I was moved to the Bagram detention facility I was told by US intelligence agents that if I did not co-operate I would be meeting the same fate as him. They said he didn't answer their questions so they sent him to Egypt. There he told them his life story within two days.

What I didn't know at the time – but have learned and spoken about since – is that al-Libi was severely tortured, including by water-boarding, into confessing that al-Qaida was working with Saddam Hussain on obtaining chemical and biological weapons in order to kill Americans. This information was submitted to Colin Powell, the then US secretary of state, who argued the case for war against Iraq based heavily on this information – which he described as credible and reliable. But a year later al-Libi retracted his statement. That mattered little to the people of Iraq, who by then were fully under the US-led occupation.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) later opined that al-Libi's information was not correct and that he had made the confession either under duress or to get better treatment. What the world knew by then was that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that al-Qaida had no presence in Iraq until the 2003 invasion.

But in all of this, what became of al-Libi? In late 2006, President Bush announced that all high-value detainees (HVD) were being transferred from secret detention sites to Guantánamo Bay to face trial by military commission. Indeed, several allegedly high-ranking suspects, whose location had been kept hidden until then, were sent in 2007 to Guantánamo. They included Abu Zubaydah, said to be a close associate of al-Libi and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida mastermind.

Al-Libi, however, was not so fortunate. Human rights organisations reported in 2007 that al-Libi had been handed over to the latest ally in the "war on terror", Libya. Here he was sentenced to life imprisonment – his charges or trial have never been reported or made public – and ended up, dying of tuberculosis, isolated in a desert prison. It's anyone's guess as to why the US authorities chose not to send al-Libi to Guantánamo for trial, but it seems blatantly obvious to me. Perhaps one of the brave lawyers who are not given the chance to fight their clients' cases in a court of law would have done so in the court of public opinion – at a time when the world's most notorious prison – and war – was so much in the public domain.

There had been much talk by lawyers, activists, journalists and human rights groups about speaking to al-Libi somehow – before it was too late – and reportedly a delegation from Human Rights Watch were recently able to gain access to him. If the report of his death is true, exactly what happened to al-Libi, like many other cases of enforced disappearances, will probably remain unknown. The reports say that he was last visited by family members on 29 April this year. Perhaps they have an idea about how he really died and why he wasn't sent to Guantánamo. They probably are too scared to tell anyone, even if they do know. As is often the case, the wife and child he leaves behind don't even matter.

But the case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi – the man whose tortured testimony was used to justify a war that cost the lives of tens of thousands of people and, ironically, indirectly led to the pre-trial detention of thousands more – should serve as a stark reminder of what happens when torture is applied to gain information. President Obama has recently granted immunity to CIA agents who may well have been involved in al-Libi's interrogation and torture. If the desire to get at what went wrong is so blatantly covered up under cover of "national security concerns", there will be no end to this. And once again, the warmongers will get away with another odious and criminal cover-up.

What happened to Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi?, G, 13.6.2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/may/13/ibn-al-sheikh-al-libi

Op-Ed Contributor

Tales From Torture’s Dark World

March 15, 2009
The New York Times
By MARK DANNER

ON a bright sunny day two years ago, President George W. Bush strode into the East Room of the White House and informed the world that the United States had created a dark and secret universe to hold and interrogate captured terrorists.

“In addition to the terrorists held at Guantánamo,” the president said, “a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the United States, in a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

At these places, Mr. Bush said, “the C.I.A. used an alternative set of procedures.” He added: “These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.” This speech will stand, I believe, as George W. Bush’s most important: perhaps the only historic speech he ever gave. In his fervent defense of his government’s “alternative set of procedures” and his equally fervent insistence that they were “lawful,” he set out before the country America’s dark moral epic of torture, in the coils of whose contradictions we find ourselves entangled still.

At the same time, perhaps unwittingly, Mr. Bush made it possible that day for those on whom the alternative set of procedures were performed eventually to speak. For he announced that he would send 14 “high-value detainees” from dark into twilight: they would be transferred from the overseas “black sites” to Guantánamo. There, while awaiting trial, the International Committee of the Red Cross would be “advised of their detention, and will have the opportunity to meet with them.”

A few weeks later, from Oct. 6 to 11 and then from Dec. 4 to 14, 2006, Red Cross officials — whose duty it is to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and to supervise treatment of prisoners of war — traveled to Guantánamo and began interviewing the prisoners.

Their stated goal was to produce a report that would “provide a description of the treatment and material conditions of detention of the 14 during the period they were held in the C.I.A. detention program,” periods ranging “from 16 months to almost four and a half years.”

As the Red Cross interviewers informed the detainees, their report was not intended to be released to the public but, “to the extent that each detainee agreed for it to be transmitted to the authorities,” to be given in strictest secrecy to officials of the government agency that had been in charge of holding them — in this case the Central Intelligence Agency, to whose acting general counsel, John Rizzo, the report was sent on Feb. 14, 2007.

The result is a document — labeled “confidential” and clearly intended only for the eyes of those senior American officials — that tells a story of what happened to each of the 14 detainees inside the black sites.

A short time ago, this document came into my hands and I have set out the stories it tells in a longer article in The New York Review of Books. Because these stories were taken down confidentially in patient interviews by professionals from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and not intended for public consumption, they have an unusual claim to authenticity.

Indeed, since the detainees were kept strictly apart and isolated, both at the black sites and at Guantánamo, the striking similarity in their stories would seem to make fabrication extremely unlikely. As its authors state in their introduction, “The I.C.R.C. wishes to underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided separately by each of the 14 adds particular weight to the information provided below.”

Beginning with the chapter headings on its contents page — “suffocation by water,” “prolonged stress standing,” “beatings by use of a collar,” “confinement in a box” — the document makes compelling and chilling reading. The stories recounted in its fewer than 50 pages lead inexorably to this unequivocal conclusion, which, given its source, has the power of a legal determination: “The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

•

Perhaps one should start with the story of the first man to whom, according to news reports, the president’s “alternative set of procedures” were applied:

“I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately 4 meters by 4 meters. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed. After some time, I think it was several days, but can’t remember exactly, I was transferred to a chair where I was kept, shackled by hands and feet for what I think was the next two to three weeks. During this time I developed blisters on the underside of my legs due to the constant sitting. I was only allowed to get up from the chair to go [to] the toilet, which consisted of a bucket.

“I was given no solid food during the first two or three weeks, while sitting on the chair. I was only given Ensure and water to drink. At first the Ensure made me vomit, but this became less with time.

“The cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold. Very loud, shouting-type music was constantly playing. It kept repeating about every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. Sometimes the music stopped and was replaced by a loud hissing or crackling noise.

“The guards were American, but wore masks to conceal their faces. My interrogators did not wear masks.”

So begins the story of Abu Zubaydah, a senior member of Al Qaeda, captured in a raid in Pakistan in March 2002. The arrest of an active terrorist with actionable information was a coup for the United States.

After being treated for his wounds — he had been shot in the stomach, leg and groin during his capture — Abu Zubaydah was brought to one of the black sites, probably in Thailand, and placed in that white room.

It is important to note that Abu Zubaydah was not alone with his interrogators, that everyone in that white room — guards, interrogators, doctor — was in fact linked directly, and almost constantly, to senior intelligence officials on the other side of the world. “It wasn’t up to individual interrogators to decide, ‘Well, I’m going to slap him. Or I’m going to shake him,’” said John Kiriakou, a C.I.A. officer who helped capture Abu Zubaydah, in an interview with ABC News.

Every one of the steps taken with regard to Abu Zubaydah “had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations. So before you laid a hand on him, you had to send in the cable saying, ‘He’s uncooperative. Request permission to do X.’”

He went on: “The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific.... No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard.”

Shortly after Abu Zubaydah was captured, C.I.A. officers briefed the National Security Council’s principals committee, including Vice President Dick Cheney, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, in detail on the interrogation plans for the prisoner. As the interrogations proceeded, so did the briefings, with George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, bringing to senior officials almost daily reports of the techniques applied.

At the time, the spring and summer of 2002, Justice Department officials, led by John Yoo, were working on a memorandum, now known informally as “the torture memo,” which claimed that for an “alternative procedure” to be considered torture, and thus illegal, it would have to cause pain of the sort “that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result.” The memo was approved in August 2002, thus serving as a legal “green light” for interrogators to apply the most aggressive techniques to Abu Zubaydah:

“I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.”

The prisoner was then put in a coffin-like black box, about 4 feet by 3 feet and 6 feet high, “for what I think was about one and a half to two hours.” He added: The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.”

After this beating, Abu Zubaydah was placed in a small box approximately three feet tall. “They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about three months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don’t know how long I remained in the small box; I think I may have slept or maybe fainted.

“I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly, and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited.

“The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless.”

After being placed again in the tall box, Abu Zubaydah “was then taken out and again a towel was wrapped around my neck and I was smashed into the wall with the plywood covering and repeatedly slapped in the face by the same two interrogators as before.

“I was then made to sit on the floor with a black hood over my head until the next session of torture began. The room was always kept very cold.

This went on for approximately one week.”

•

Walid bin Attash, a Saudi involved with planning the attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998 and on the Navy destroyer Cole in 2000, was captured in Pakistan on April 29, 2003:

“On arrival at the place of detention in Afghanistan I was stripped naked. I remained naked for the next two weeks.... I was kept in a standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running across the width of the cell. The cell was dark with no light, artificial or natural.”

This forced standing, with arms shackled above the head, seems to have become standard procedure. It proved especially painful for Mr. bin Attash, who had lost a leg fighting in Afghanistan:

“After some time being held in this position my stump began to hurt so I removed my artificial leg to relieve the pain. Of course my good leg then began to ache and soon started to give way so that I was left hanging with all my weight on my wrists.”

Cold water was used on Mr. bin Attash in combination with beatings and the use of a plastic collar, which seems to have been a refinement of the towel that had been looped around Abu Zubaydah’s neck:

“On a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room. It was also placed around my neck when being taken out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead me along the corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the corridor during such movements.

“Also on a daily basis during the first two weeks I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets.... I would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold water for several minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation.”

•

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the key planner of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003.

After three days in what he believes was a prison in Afghanistan, Mr. Mohammed was put in a tracksuit, blindfold, hood and headphones, and shackled and placed aboard a plane. He quickly fell asleep — “the first proper sleep in over five days” — and remains unsure of how long the journey took. On arrival, however, he realized he had come a long way:

“I could see at one point there was snow on the ground. Everybody was wearing black, with masks and army boots, like Planet X people. I think the country was Poland. I think this because on one occasion a water bottle was brought to me without the label removed. It had [an] e-mail address ending in ‘.pl.’”

He was stripped and put in a small cell. “I was kept for one month in the cell in a standing position with my hands cuffed and shackled above my head and my feet cuffed and shackled to a point in the floor,” he told the Red Cross.

“Of course during this month I fell asleep on some occasions while still being held in this position. This resulted in all my weight being applied to the handcuffs around my wrist, resulting in open and bleeding wounds. [Scars consistent with this allegation were visible on both wrists as well as on both ankles.] Both my feet became very swollen after one month of almost continual standing.”

For interrogation, Mr. Mohammed was taken to a different room. The sessions lasted for as long as eight hours and as short as four.

“If I was perceived not to be cooperating I would be put against a wall and punched and slapped in the body, head and face. A thick flexible plastic collar would also be placed around my neck so that it could then be held at the two ends by a guard who would use it to slam me repeatedly against the wall. The beatings were combined with the use of cold water, which was poured over me using a hose-pipe.”

As with Abu Zubaydah, the harshest sessions involved the “alternative set of procedures” used in sequence and in combination, one technique intensifying the effects of the others:

“The beatings became worse and I had cold water directed at me from a hose-pipe by guards while I was still in my cell. The worst day was when I was beaten for about half an hour by one of the interrogators. My head was banged against the wall so hard that it started to bleed. Cold water was poured over my head. This was then repeated with other interrogators. Finally I was taken for a session of water boarding. The torture on that day was finally stopped by the intervention of the doctor.”

Reading the Red Cross report, one becomes somewhat inured to the “alternative set of procedures” as they are described: the cold and repeated violence grow numbing. Against this background, the descriptions of daily life of the detainees in the black sites, in which interrogation seems merely a periodic heightening of consistently imposed brutality, become more striking.

Here again is Mr. Mohammed:

“After each session of torture I was put into a cell where I was allowed to lie on the floor and could sleep for a few minutes. However, due to shackles on my ankles and wrists I was never able to sleep very well.... The toilet consisted of a bucket in the cell, which I could use on request” — he was shackled standing, his hands affixed to the ceiling — “but I was not allowed to clean myself after toilet during the first month.... I wasn’t given any clothes for the first month. Artificial light was on 24 hours a day, but I never saw sunlight.”

•

Abu Zubaydah, Walid bin Attash, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — these men almost certainly have blood on their hands. There is strong reason to believe that they had critical parts in planning and organizing terrorist operations that caused the deaths of thousands of people. So in all likelihood did the other “high-value detainees” whose treatment while secretly confined by the United States is described in the Red Cross report.

From everything we know, many or all of these men deserve to be tried and punished — to be “brought to justice,” as President Bush vowed they would be. The fact that judges, military or civilian, throw out cases of prisoners who have been tortured — and have already done so at Guantánamo — means it is highly unlikely that they will be brought to justice anytime soon.

For the men who have committed great crimes, this seems to mark perhaps the most important and consequential sense in which “torture doesn’t work.” The use of torture deprives the society whose laws have been so egregiously violated of the possibility of rendering justice. Torture destroys justice. Torture in effect relinquishes this sacred right in exchange for speculative benefits whose value is, at the least, much disputed.

As I write, it is impossible to know definitively what benefits — in intelligence, in national security, in disrupting Al Qaeda — the president’s approval of use of an “alternative set of procedures” might have brought to the United States. Only a thorough investigation, which we are now promised, much belatedly, by the Senate Intelligence Committee, can determine that.

What we can say with certainty, in the wake of the Red Cross report, is that the United States tortured prisoners and that the Bush administration, including the president himself, explicitly and aggressively denied that fact. We can also say that the decision to torture, in a political war with militant Islam, harmed American interests by destroying the democratic and Constitutional reputation of the United States, undermining its liberal sympathizers in the Muslim world and helping materially in the recruitment of young Muslims to the extremist cause. By deciding to torture, we freely chose to embrace the caricature they had made of us. The consequences of this choice, legal, political and moral, now confront us. Time and elections are not enough to make them go away.

Mark Danner, a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bard College, is the author of "Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror.” This essay is drawn from a longer article in the new issue of The New York Review of Books, available at www.nybooks.com .

Tales From Torture’s Dark World, NYT, 15.3.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15danner.html

Terrorist watch list hits 1 million

10 March 2009
USA Today
By Peter Eisler

WASHINGTON — The government's terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, up 32% since 2007.

Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations.

It's unclear how many individuals those 33,000 records represent — the center often uses multiple entries, or "identities," for a person to reflect variances in name spellings or other identifying information. The remaining million entries represent about 400,000 individuals, according to the center.

The new figures were provided by the screening center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to requests from USA TODAY.

"We're continually trying to improve the quality of the information," says Timothy Edgar, a civil liberties officer at the intelligence director's office. "It's always going to be a work in progress."

People put on the watch list by intelligence and law enforcement agencies can be blocked from flying, stopped at borders or subjected to other scrutiny. About 95% of the people on the list are foreigners, the FBI says, but it's a source of frequent complaints from U.S. travelers.

In the past two years, 51,000 people have filed "redress" requests claiming they were wrongly included on the watch list, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In the vast majority of cases reviewed so far, it has turned out that the petitioners were not actually on the list, with most having been misidentified at airports because their names resembled others on it.

There have been 830 redress requests since 2005 where the person was, in fact, confirmed to be on the watch list, and further review by the screening center led to the removal of 150, or 18% of them.

Without specific rules for who goes on the list, it's too bloated to be effective, says Tim Sparapani, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.

A 2007 audit by the Government Accountability Office said more needed to be done to ensure the list's accuracy, but still found that it has "enhanced the U.S. government's counterterrorism efforts."

Terrorist watch list hits 1 million, UT, 10.3.2009, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-03-10-watchlist_N.htm

Editorial

The Torture Report

December 18, 2008
The New York Times

Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.

Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

The report shows how actions by these men “led directly” to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons.

It said these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America’s standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War. Until the Bush administration, their only use in the United States was to train soldiers to resist what might be done to them if they were captured by a lawless enemy.

The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the “war on terror” — the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions.

•

That order set the stage for the infamous redefinition of torture at the Justice Department, and then Mr. Rumsfeld’s authorization of “aggressive” interrogation methods. Some of those methods were torture by any rational definition and many of them violate laws and treaties against abusive and degrading treatment.

These top officials ignored warnings from lawyers in every branch of the armed forces that they were breaking the law, subjecting uniformed soldiers to possible criminal charges and authorizing abuses that were not only considered by experts to be ineffective, but were actually counterproductive.

One page of the report lists the repeated objections that President Bush and his aides so blithely and arrogantly ignored: The Air Force had “serious concerns regarding the legality of many of the proposed techniques”; the chief legal adviser to the military’s criminal investigative task force said they were of dubious value and may subject soldiers to prosecution; one of the Army’s top lawyers said some techniques that stopped well short of the horrifying practice of waterboarding “may violate the torture statute.” The Marines said they “arguably violate federal law.” The Navy pleaded for a real review.

The legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time started that review but told the Senate committee that her boss, Gen. Richard Myers, ordered her to stop on the instructions of Mr. Rumsfeld’s legal counsel, Mr. Haynes.

The report indicates that Mr. Haynes was an early proponent of the idea of using the agency that trains soldiers to withstand torture to devise plans for the interrogation of prisoners held by the American military. These trainers — who are not interrogators but experts only on how physical and mental pain is inflicted and may be endured — were sent to work with interrogators in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo and in Iraq.

On Dec. 2, 2002, Mr. Rumsfeld authorized the interrogators at Guantánamo to use a range of abusive techniques that were already widespread in Afghanistan, enshrining them as official policy. Instead of a painstaking legal review, Mr. Rumsfeld based that authorization on a one-page memo from Mr. Haynes. The Senate panel noted that senior military lawyers considered the memo “ ‘legally insufficient’ and ‘woefully inadequate.’ ”

Mr. Rumsfeld rescinded his order a month later, and narrowed the number of “aggressive techniques” that could be used at Guantánamo. But he did so only after the Navy’s chief lawyer threatened to formally protest the illegal treatment of prisoners. By then, at least one prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani, had been threatened with military dogs, deprived of sleep for weeks, stripped naked and made to wear a leash and perform dog tricks. This year, a military tribunal at Guantánamo dismissed the charges against Mr. Qahtani.

The abuse and torture of prisoners continued at prisons run by the C.I.A. and specialists from the torture-resistance program remained involved in the military detention system until 2004. Some of the practices Mr. Rumsfeld left in place seem illegal, like prolonged sleep deprivation.

•

These policies have deeply harmed America’s image as a nation of laws and may make it impossible to bring dangerous men to real justice. The report said the interrogation techniques were ineffective, despite the administration’s repeated claims to the contrary.

Alberto Mora, the former Navy general counsel who protested the abuses, told the Senate committee that “there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq — as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat — are, respectively, the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.”

We can understand that Americans may be eager to put these dark chapters behind them, but it would be irresponsible for the nation and a new administration to ignore what has happened — and may still be happening in secret C.I.A. prisons that are not covered by the military’s current ban on activities like waterboarding.

A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the abuse.

•

Given his other problems — and how far he has moved from the powerful stands he took on these issues early in the campaign — we do not hold out real hope that Barack Obama, as president, will take such a politically fraught step.

At the least, Mr. Obama should, as the organization Human Rights First suggested, order his attorney general to review more than two dozen prisoner-abuse cases that reportedly were referred to the Justice Department by the Pentagon and the C.I.A. — and declined by Mr. Bush’s lawyers.

Mr. Obama should consider proposals from groups like Human Rights Watch and the Brennan Center for Justice to appoint an independent panel to look into these and other egregious violations of the law. Like the 9/11 commission, it would examine in depth the decisions on prisoner treatment, as well as warrantless wiretapping, that eroded the rule of law and violated Americans’ most basic rights. Unless the nation and its leaders know precisely what went wrong in the last seven years, it will be impossible to fix it and make sure those terrible mistakes are not repeated.

We expect Mr. Obama to keep the promise he made over and over in the campaign — to cheering crowds at campaign rallies and in other places, including our office in New York. He said one of his first acts as president would be to order a review of all of Mr. Bush’s executive orders and reverse those that eroded civil liberties and the rule of law.

That job will fall to Eric Holder, a veteran prosecutor who has been chosen as attorney general, and Gregory Craig, a lawyer with extensive national security experience who has been selected as Mr. Obama’s White House counsel.

A good place for them to start would be to reverse Mr. Bush’s disastrous order of Feb. 7, 2002, declaring that the United States was no longer legally committed to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

The Torture Report, NYT, 18.12.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/opinion/18thu1.html

Ahead for Obama: How to Define Terror

November 30, 2008
The New York Times
By JONATHAN MAHLER

WASHINGTON — Early last Tuesday morning, a military charter plane left the airstrip at Guantánamo Bay for Sana, Yemen, carrying Osama bin Laden’s former driver, Salim Hamdan. Once the Bush administration’s poster boy for the war on terror — the first defendant in America’s first military tribunals since World War II — Mr. Hamdan will spend less than a month in a Yemeni prison before returning to his family in Sana, having been acquitted by a jury of United States military officers of the most serious charge brought against him, conspiracy to support terrorism.

The turn of events underscores the central challenge President Obama will face as he begins to define his own approach to fighting terrorism — and the imperative for him to adopt a new, hybrid plan, one that blends elements of both traditional military conflict and criminal justice.

Until now, much of the debate over how best to battle terrorism has centered on the two prevailing — and conflicting — paradigms: Is it a war or a criminal action? The Hamdan case highlights the limitations of such binary thinking. As the verdict in his tribunal this summer made clear, Mr. Hamdan was not a criminal conspirator in the classic sense. Yet, as an aide to the world’s most dangerous terrorist, neither was he a conventional prisoner of war who had simply been captured in the act of defending his nation and was therefore essentially free of guilt.

So how should Americans think about Mr. Hamdan? More broadly, how should they think about the fight against terrorism?

The problems with the war paradigm are by now familiar. Because the war on terror is unlike any other the United States has waged, traditional wartime policies and mechanisms have made for an awkward fit, in some instances undermining efforts to defeat terrorism. The traditional approach to dealing with captured combatants — holding them until the end of hostilities to prevent them from returning to the battlefield — is untenable in a war that could last for generations.

If you treat the fight against terrorism as a war, it’s hard to get around the argument that it’s a war without boundaries; a terrorist could be hiding anywhere. Yet by asserting the right to scoop up suspected terrorists in other sovereign nations and indefinitely detain and interrogate them without hearings or trials, the administration complicated its efforts to build an international coalition against terrorism.

“The war-against-Al-Qaeda paradigm put us in a position where our legal authorities to detain and interrogate didn’t match up with those of our allies, so we ended up building a system that’s often rejected as strategically unsound and legally suspect by even our closest allies,” says Matthew Waxman, a law professor at Columbia who worked on detainee issues in the Bush administration.

Perhaps the most problematic consequence of the war paradigm, though, is that it gave the president enormous powers — as commander in chief — to determine how to detain and interrogate captured combatants. It was the use, or abuse, of those powers that produced the Bush administration’s string of historic rebukes at the Supreme Court, starting in 2004 when the justices ruled in Rasul v. Bush that the president had to afford the Guantánamo detainees some due process.

Some critics of President Bush are now urging President-elect Obama to abandon the war paradigm in favor of a pure criminal-justice approach, which is to say, either subject captured combatants to criminal trials or let them go. This will almost certainly not happen.

Mr. Obama may be more inclined to prosecute suspected terrorists in the federal courts than Mr. Bush has been, and he may even avoid referring to the battle against terrorism as a “war.” But ceding the military paradigm altogether would severely limit his ability to fight terrorism. On a practical level, it would prevent him from operating in a zone like the tribal areas of Pakistan, where American law does not reach.

“If you seriously dialed it back to the criminal-justice apparatus you will paralyze the executive branch’s ability to go where they believe the bad guys are,” says Benjamin Wittes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “When people talk about a return to the criminal-justice system, they’re ignoring the geographical limits of that system.”

In fact, the military approach to fighting terrorism predates the Bush administration. After Al Qaeda attacked two American embassies in Africa in 1998, President Clinton launched cruise missiles against terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan thought to be making chemical weapons. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama said he would not hesitate to take out terrorist targets in Pakistan — an act of war — if that country’s government was unwilling to do so itself.

Going forward, the fight against terrorism will have to be something of a hybrid. This is a novel idea, as the Constitution lays out only two distinct options: the country is at war, or it is not. Such a strategy may require building new legal systems and institutions for detaining, interrogating and trying detainees.

There has already been talk of creating a national security court within the federal judiciary that would presumably give more flexibility on matters like, say, the standard of proof for evidence collected on an Afghan battlefield. Similarly, it may be necessary to set clear legal guidelines for when the government can detain enemy combatants, and how far C.I.A. agents can go when interrogating terror suspects.

This won’t be easy. It will require striking a balance between the need to preserve and promote America’s rule-of-law values, protect its intelligence gathering and ensure that no one who poses a serious threat is set free.

Such an infrastructure is not likely to survive unchallenged, let alone win popular support, if the executive branch builds it alone. Its chances would be far better with input from Congress, acting as the elected representatives of the people to ensure that any new systems protect both the public and America’s values. And direct advice from the courts could ensure that they are found to be constitutional.

Paradoxically, such an approach might ultimately enhance a president’s power. “We need a strong president to fight this war,” says Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard who worked in the Bush Justice Department, “and the way to ensure that there’s a strong president is to have the other institutions on board for the actions he feels he needs to take.”

Jonathan Mahler, a contributing writer for The Times Magazine, is the author, most recently, of “The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power.”

Ahead for Obama: How to Define Terror, NYT, 30.11.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/weekinreview/30mahler.html

Next President Will Face Test on Detainees

November 3, 2008
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON and MARGOT WILLIAMS

They were called the Dirty 30 — bodyguards for Osama bin Laden captured early in the Afghanistan war — and many of them are still being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Others still at the much-criticized detention camp there include prisoners who the government says were trained in assassination and the use of poisons and disguises.

One detainee is said to have been schooled in making detonators out of Sega game cartridges. A Yemeni who has received little public attention was originally selected by Mr. bin Laden as a potential Sept. 11 hijacker, intelligence officials say.

As the Bush administration enters its final months with no apparent plan to close the Guantánamo Bay camp, an extensive review of the government’s military tribunal files suggests that dozens of the roughly 255 prisoners remaining in detention are said by military and intelligence agencies to have been captured with important terrorism suspects, to have connections to top leaders of Al Qaeda or to have other serious terrorism credentials.

Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have said they would close the detention camp, but the review of the government’s public files underscores the challenges of fulfilling that promise. The next president will have to contend with sobering intelligence claims against many of the remaining detainees.

“It would be very difficult for a new president to come in and say, ‘I don’t believe what the C.I.A. is saying about these guys,’ ” said Daniel Marcus, a Democrat who was general counsel of the 9/11 Commission and held senior positions in the Carter and Clinton administrations.

The strength of the evidence is difficult to assess, because the government has kept much of it secret and because of questions about whether some was gathered through torture.

When the administration has had to defend its accusations in court, government lawyers in several cases have retreated from the most serious claims. As a result, critics have raised doubts about the danger of Guantánamo’s prisoners beyond a handful of the camp’s most notorious ones.

But as a new administration begins to sort through the government’s dossiers on the men, the analysis shows, officials are likely to face tough choices in deciding how many of Guantánamo’s hard cases should be sent home, how many should be charged and what to do with the rest.

The Pentagon has declined to provide a list of the detainees now being held or even to specify how many there are beyond offering a figure of “about 255.” But by reviewing thousands of pages of government documents released in recent years, as well as court records and news reports from around the world, The New York Times was able to compile its own list and construct a picture of the population still held at Guantánamo Bay.

Much of the analysis is based on records of Guantánamo hearings for individual detainees, which have been made public since 2006 as a result of a lawsuit by The Associated Press. The Times has posted those documents on its Web site arranged by detainee name.

The analysis shows that about 34 of the remaining detainees were seized in raids in Pakistan that netted three men the government calls major Qaeda operatives: Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Al Hajj Abdu Ali Sharqawi. Sixteen detainees are accused of some of the most significant terrorist attacks in the last decade, including the 1998 bombings at American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen, and the Sept. 11 attacks. Twenty others were called Mr. bin Laden’s bodyguards.

The analysis also shows that 13 of the original 23 detainees who arrived at Guantánamo on Jan. 11, 2002, remain there nearly seven years later. Of the roughly 255 men now being held, more than 60 have been cleared for release or transfer, according to the Pentagon, but remain at Guantánamo because of difficulties negotiating transfer agreements between the United States and other countries.

Two of those still held, government documents show, were seen by Mr. bin Laden as potential Sept. 11 hijackers. The case of Mohammed al-Qahtani, whom the government has labeled a potential “20th hijacker,” has drawn wide notice because he was subjected to interrogation tactics that included sleep deprivation, isolation and being put on a leash and forced to perform dog tricks.

The other detainee deemed a potential hijacker, whose presence at Guantánamo has gone virtually unmentioned in public reports, is a Yemeni called Abu Bara. The 9/11 Commission said he studied flights and airport security and participated in an important planning meeting for the 2001 attack in Malaysia in January 2000.

The Guantánamo list also includes two Saudi brothers, Hassan and Walid bin Attash. The government describes them as something like Qaeda royalty. Military officials said during Guantánamo hearings that their father, imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, was a “close contact of Osama bin Laden” and that his sons were committed jihadists.

Walid bin Attash is facing a possible death sentence as a coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks. Hassan bin Attash was accused of having been involved in planning attacks on American oil tankers and Navy ships.

Hassan bin Attash’s lawyer, David H. Remes, said the government’s claims about the detainees were not credible. He and other detainees’ lawyers say that the government’s accusations have been ever-changing and that much of the evidence was obtained using techniques he and others have described as torture.

“You look at all of this stuff, and it looks terribly scary,” Mr. Remes said. “But how do we know any of it is true?”

The extensive use of secret evidence and information derived from aggressive interrogations has led critics around the world to conclude that many detainees were wrongly held. Nearly seven years after Guantánamo opened its metal gates, only 18 of the current detainees are facing war crimes charges.

While both presidential candidates have said they would close the detention center, they have not said in detail how they would handle the remaining detainees.

Mr. McCain has said he would move the Guantánamo detainees to the United States but has indicated that he would try them in the Pentagon’s commission system established after 9/11. After the conviction at Guantánamo last summer of a former driver for Mr. bin Laden, Mr. McCain said the verdict “demonstrated that military commissions can effectively bring very dangerous terrorists to justice.”

Mr. Obama has said that the Bush administration’s system of trying detainees “has been an enormous failure” and that the existing American legal system was strong enough to handle the trials of terrorism suspects.

But in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006, Mr. Obama suggested that the charges against many of the detainees needed to be taken seriously. “Now the majority of the folks in Guantánamo, I suspect, are there for a reason,” he said. “There are a lot of dangerous people.”

Some of the remaining prisoners have appeared determined to show how dangerous they are. “I admit to you it is my honor to be an enemy of the United States,” said a Yemeni detainee, Abdul Rahman Ahmed, a hearing record shows. Officials said Mr. Ahmed had been trained at a terrorist camp “how to dress and act at an airport” and to resist interrogation.

A Saudi detainee, Muhammed Murdi Issa al Zahrani, was described by Pentagon officials as a trained assassin who helped plan the suicide-bomb killing of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan rebel leader, on Sept. 9, 2001.

“The detainee said America is ruled by the Jews,” an officer said at a hearing after interviewing him, “therefore America and Israel are his enemies.”

One man caught with Abu Zubaydah insisted on his innocence but described a training camp outside Kabul, Afghanistan, where, according to information he gave to interrogators, men were given “lessons on how to make poisons that could be inhaled, swallowed or absorbed through the skin.”

Mr. bin al Shibh was caught with a group of six Yemenis, all of whom are still held, after a two-and-a-half-hour gun battle. The records of those detainees include allegations that some were “a special terrorist team deployed to attack targets in Karachi.” One of the men, Hail Aziz Ahmad al Maythal, was trained in the use of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, machine guns and “trench digging, disguise techniques, escape methods, evasion and map reading,” according to the military’s accusations.

The records include many of the murky cases that typify the image of Guantánamo, where detainees take issue with their own supposed confessions and, sometimes, their identities. And those doubts too are to be part of a new administration’s inheritance.

“I was forced to say all these things,” an Algerian detainee, Adil Hadi al Jazairi bin Hamlili, said at his hearing when confronted with his confession to murder and knowledge of a plot to sell uranium to Al Qaeda. “I was abused mentally and psychologically, by threatening to be raped,” he said, adding, “You would say anything.”

Abdul Hafiz, an Afghan accused of killing a Red Cross worker at a Taliban roadblock in 2003, told a military officer that he had the perfect alibi. “The detainee states again that he is not Abdul Hafiz,” the officer reported to a military tribunal.

Andrei Scheinkman contributed research.

Next President Will Face Test on Detainees, NYT, 3.11.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/us/03gitmo.html

Editorial

The Torture Sessions

April 20, 2008
The New York Times

Ever since Americans learned that American soldiers and intelligence agents were torturing prisoners, there has been a disturbing question: How high up did the decision go to ignore United States law, international treaties, the Geneva Conventions and basic morality?

The answer, we have learned recently, is that — with President Bush’s clear knowledge and support — some of the very highest officials in the land not only approved the abuse of prisoners, but participated in the detailed planning of harsh interrogations and helped to create a legal structure to shield from justice those who followed the orders.

We have long known that the Justice Department tortured the law to give its Orwellian blessing to torturing people, and that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a list of ways to abuse prisoners. But recent accounts by ABC News and The Associated Press said that all of the president’s top national security advisers at the time participated in creating the interrogation policy: Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Rumsfeld; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; Colin Powell, the secretary of state; John Ashcroft, the attorney general; and George Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

These officials did not have the time or the foresight to plan for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq or the tenacity to complete the hunt for Osama bin Laden. But they managed to squeeze in dozens of meetings in the White House Situation Room to organize and give legal cover to prisoner abuse, including brutal methods that civilized nations consider to be torture.

Mr. Bush told ABC News this month that he knew of these meetings and approved of the result.

Those who have followed the story of the administration’s policies on prisoners may not be shocked. We have read the memos from the Justice Department redefining torture, claiming that Mr. Bush did not have to follow the law, and offering a blueprint for avoiding criminal liability for abusing prisoners.

The amount of time and energy devoted to this furtive exercise at the very highest levels of the government reminded us how little Americans know, in fact, about the ways Mr. Bush and his team undermined, subverted and broke the law in the name of saving the American way of life.

We have questions to ask, in particular, about the involvement of Ms. Rice, who has managed to escape blame for the catastrophic decisions made while she was Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, and Mr. Powell, a career Army officer who should know that torture has little value as an interrogation method and puts captured Americans at much greater risk. Did they raise objections or warn of the disastrous effect on America’s standing in the world? Did anyone?

Mr. Bush has sidestepped or quashed every attempt to uncover the breadth and depth of his sordid actions. Congress is likely to endorse a cover-up of the extent of the illegal wiretapping he authorized after 9/11, and we are still waiting, with diminishing hopes, for a long-promised report on what the Bush team really knew before the Iraq invasion about those absent weapons of mass destruction — as opposed to what it proclaimed.

At this point it seems that getting answers will have to wait, at least, for a new Congress and a new president. Ideally, there would be both truth and accountability. At the very minimum the public needs the full truth.

Some will call this a backward-looking distraction, but only by fully understanding what Mr. Bush has done over eight years to distort the rule of law and violate civil liberties and human rights can Americans ever hope to repair the damage and ensure it does not happen again.

The Torture Sessions, NYT, 20.4.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/opinion/20sun1.html

McCain, Iraq War and the Threat of ‘Al Qaeda’

April 19, 2008
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER and LARRY ROHTER

As he campaigns with the weight of a deeply unpopular war on his shoulders, Senator John McCain of Arizona frequently uses the shorthand “Al Qaeda” to describe the enemy in Iraq in pressing to stay the course in the war there.

“Al Qaeda is on the run, but they’re not defeated” is his standard line on how things are going in Iraq. When chiding the Democrats for wanting to withdraw troops, he has been known to warn that “Al Qaeda will then have won.” In an attack this winter on Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic front-runner, Mr. McCain went further, warning that if American forces withdrew, Al Qaeda would be “taking a country.”

Critics say that in framing the war that way at rallies or in sound bites, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is oversimplifying the hydra-headed nature of the insurgency in Iraq in a way that exploits the emotions that have been aroused by the name “Al Qaeda” since the Sept. 11 attacks.

There has been heated debate since the start of the war about the nature of the threat in Iraq. The Bush administration has long portrayed the fight as part of a broader battle against Islamic terrorists. Opponents of the war accuse the administration of deliberately blurring the distinction between the Sept. 11 attackers and anti-American forces in Iraq.

“The fundamental problem we face in Iraq is that there is not a single center of gravity, as in the cold war, but a whole constellation of contending forces,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism and counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University. “This is much more fractionated than most people could imagine, with multiple, independent moving parts, and when you have that universe of networks, you can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach.”

The entity Mr. McCain was referring to — Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq — did not exist until after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. The most recent National Intelligence Estimates consider it the most potent offshoot of Al Qaeda proper, the group led by Osama bin Laden that is now believed to be based on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

It is a largely homegrown and loosely organized group of Sunni Arabs that, according to the official American military view that Mr. McCain endorses, is led at least in part by foreign operatives and receives fighters, financing and direction from senior Qaeda leaders.

In longer discussions on the subject, Mr. McCain often goes into greater specificity about the entities jockeying for control in Iraq. Some other analysts do not object to Mr. McCain’s portraying the insurgency (or multiple insurgencies) in Iraq as that of Al Qaeda. They say he is using a “perfectly reasonable catchall phrase” that, although it may be out of place in an academic setting, is acceptable on the campaign trail, a place that “does not lend itself to long-winded explanations of what we really are facing,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

But some students of the insurgency say Mr. McCain is making a dangerous generalization. “The U.S. has not been fighting Al Qaeda, it’s been fighting Iraqis,” said Juan Cole, a fierce critic of the war who is the author of “Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi’ite Islam” and a professor of history at the University of Michigan. A member of Al Qaeda “is technically defined as someone who pledges fealty to Osama bin Laden and is given a terror operation to carry out. It’s kind of like the Mafia,” Mr. Cole said. “You make your bones, and you’re loyal to a capo. And I don’t know if anyone in Iraq quite fits that technical definition.”

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is just one group, though a very lethal one, in the stew of competing Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iranian-backed groups, criminal gangs and others that make up the insurgency in Iraq. That was vividly illustrated last month when the Iraqi Army’s unsuccessful effort to wrest control of Basra from the Shiite militia groups that hold sway there led to an explosion of violence.

The current situation in Iraq should properly be described as “a multifactional civil war” in which “the government is composed of rival Shia factions” and “they are embattled with an outside Shia group, the Mahdi Army,” Ira M. Lapidus, a co-author of “Islam, Politics and Social Movements” and a professor of history at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in an e-mail message. “The Sunni forces are equally hard to assess,” he added, and “it is an open question as to whether Al Qaeda is a unified operating organization at all.”

In recent months, Mr. McCain has also been talking more about the threat posed by Iranian influence in Iraq, bringing him in line with American military officials, who in the wake of the Basra fighting seem increasingly convinced that Iranian support for Shiite groups now constitutes the primary security threat in Iraq.

Mr. McCain acknowledged those concerns on Tuesday night in an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC when he said that “we now see the Iranians beginning to reassert an age-old Persian ambition, as you know, to increase their influence, particularly in southern Iraq.”

In talking about both threats, Mr. McCain tripped up last month on a visit to the Middle East, when he mistakenly said several times that the Iranians were training Qaeda operatives in Iran and sending them back to Iraq. Prompted by one of his traveling companions, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, Mr. McCain corrected himself, saying that he had misspoken and had meant to say Iran was training “other extremists” in Iraq.

And Mr. McCain went beyond what he usually says and what his foreign policy advisers believe during a back-and-forth with Mr. Obama at the end of February. It began when Mr. Obama said at a Democratic debate that while he intended to withdraw American forces from Iraq as rapidly as possible, he reserved the right to send troops back in “if Al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq.”

Mr. McCain seized on the remark. “I have some news,” he said at a town-hall-style meeting in Tyler, Tex. “Al Qaeda is in Iraq. It’s called ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq.’ My friends, if we left, they wouldn’t be establishing a base. They’d be taking a country, and I’m not going to allow that to happen.”

In general, Mr. Obama’s views track with those of many independent analysts. In a speech last August, he criticized President Bush by saying: “The president would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of Al Qaeda’s war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates Al Qaeda in Iraq — which didn’t exist before our invasion — and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan.”

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who wants to begin withdrawing troops, has spoken of leaving some troops behind to fight Al Qaeda, deal with Sunni insurgents, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly help the Iraqi military. She warned last year of the dangers if Iraq turned into a failed state “that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda.”

Few, including Mr. McCain, expect Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni group, to take control of Shiite-dominated Iraq in the event of an American withdrawal. The situation they fear and which Mr. McCain himself sometimes fleshes out is that an American withdrawal would be celebrated as a triumph by Al Qaeda and create instability that the group could then exploit to become more powerful.

“Al Qaeda in Iraq would proclaim victory and increase its efforts to provoke sectarian tensions, pushing for a full-scale civil war that could descend into genocide and destabilize the Middle East,” Mr. McCain said this month. “Iraq would become a failed state. It could become a haven for terrorists to train and plan their operations.”

Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser, said during a recent conference call with reporters that in the event of an American pullout, “you might not necessarily see a single entity taking charge.” But such a withdrawal could empower Shiite militias in the south and Kurds in the north, leaving Al Qaeda “free to try to impose its will” and lead to increased sectarian violence that “would be very likely to draw neighbors into the conflict,” he said.

While “it is absolutely incorrect to describe the Sunni insurgency in Iraq as driven by Al Qaeda, you can’t properly talk about Iraq without talking about Al Qaeda in Iraq” and its importance in the larger war against terror, said Reuel M. Gerecht, a former Middle East specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency who is now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “Bin Laden is a pretty good judge of the history of his own organization and its future, and he looks upon Iraq as the great battle, the make-or-break issue that will decide the fate of the ummah,” the global community of Islamic faithful.

When Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior military commander in Iraq, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Mr. McCain sought an endorsement of his focus on Al Qaeda. But General Petraeus responded with an evaluation more nuanced than the argument Mr. McCain typically offers on the campaign trail. Al Qaeda “is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was, say, 15 months ago,” he said.

In response to another of Mr. McCain’s questions, General Petraeus replied, “The area of operation of Al Qaeda has been greatly reduced in terms of controlling areas that it controlled as little as a year a half ago.”

McCain, Iraq War and the Threat of ‘Al Qaeda’, NYT, 19.4.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/us/politics/19threat.html

Pentagon Censors 9 / 11 Suspect's Tape

September 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:05 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon has censored an audio tape of the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks speaking at a military hearing -- cutting out Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's explanation for why Islamic militants waged jihad against the United States.

After months of debate by several federal agencies, the Defense Department released the tape Thursday. Cut from it were 10 minutes of the more than 40-minute closed court session at Guantanamo Bay to determine whether Mohammed should be declared an ''enemy combatant.''

Since the March hearing, he has been assigned ''enemy combatant'' status, a classification the Bush administration says allows it to hold him indefinitely and prosecute him at a military tribunal.

Officials from the CIA, FBI, State Department and others listened to the tape and feared it could be copied and edited by other militants for use as propaganda, officials said.

''It was determined that the release of this portion of the spoken words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would enable enemies of the United States to use it in a way to recruit or encourage future terrorists or terrorist activities,'' said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. ''This could ultimately endanger the lives and physical safety of American citizens and those of our allies.''

Calling Mohammed a ''notorious figure,'' Whitman added, ''I think we all recognize that there is an obvious difference between the potential impacts of the written versus the spoken word.''

Some of the statements deleted from the tape have already been widely reported because the Pentagon released a 26-page written transcript of the hearing several days after it was held. Others statements were cut both from the audio and the transcript because of security and privacy concerns, officials said.

Mohammed was the first of 14 so-called ''high-value'' detainees who were held in secret CIA prisons before being transferred to the Pentagon facility at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

At the hearing, he portrayed himself as al-Qaida's most active operational planner, confessing to the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl and to playing a central role in 30 other attacks and plots in the U.S. and worldwide that killed thousands.

The gruesome attacks range from the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001 -- which killed nearly 3,000 -- to a 2002 shooting on an island off Kuwait that killed a U.S. Marine.

Among statements that appeared in the transcript, but were cut from the audio, was Mohammed saying he felt some sorrow over Sept. 11.

''I'm not happy that 3,000 been killed in America,'' the transcript quoted him as saying in broken English. ''I feel sorry even. I don't like to kill children and the kids.''

But he says there are exceptions in war.

''The language of the war is victims,'' Mohammed said in a part of the transcript that was cut from the audio. He compared al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden to George Washington, saying Americans view Washington as a hero for his role in the Revolutionary War and many Muslims view bin Laden in the same light.

''He is doing same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence,'' Mohammed said.

During much of Mohammed's hearing, he spoke in English. The audio released by the Pentagon includes Mohammed responding to questions.

Audio tapes of other high-value detainees have been released by the Pentagon. Whitman said he did not know if any of those have been used as propaganda by extremist groups on the Internet.

The audio tape also includes a number of other redactions that reflect portions of the written transcript that were deleted, because of security and privacy concerns, when it was first released.

One of the sections initially held back by the Pentagon, but later released, was Mohammed's confession to the beheading of Pearl. ''I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,'' Mohammed said in a written statement read by his U.S.-appointed representative for the hearing.

Officials at first held back the section to allow time for his family to be notified, Whitman said at the time.

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AP Washington reporter Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Combatant--Tribunals.html

Pentagon Censors 9 / 11 Suspect's Tape, NYT, 13.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Sept-11-Confession-Audio.html

Survivors to Remember Okla. City Bombing

April 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:53 a.m. ET
The New York Times

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Survivors and relatives of victims will gather to mark the 12th anniversary of Oklahoma City bombing on Thursday, three days after the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history shocked the nation.

Mourners gather each year April 19 at the former site of the Murrah Federal Building to observe the anniversary of the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, which killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

Participants will observe 168 seconds of silence, followed by family members reading the names of their lost loved ones.

Organizers said attention also will focus on the deaths of 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday during a rampage by a man who then killed himself.

''Violence obviously is happening,'' said Nancy Coggins, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. ''We hope there are ways we can reach out to them and offer support. They will be in our minds and in our hearts.''

Coggins said the ''fairly low-key'' anniversary observance will be ''a little more prominent'' this year because former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, will address the crowd.

After the ceremony, Ron Norick, who was the mayor of Oklahoma City in 1995, and Giuliani, a Republican presidential candidate, will discuss how they led their cities through acts of terrorism during a symposium at the museum.

Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, a cargo truck packed with two tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil was detonated in front of the nine-story federal building on April 19, 1995.

Timothy McVeigh was apprehended less than two hours later. He was convicted of federal murder charges and was executed June 11, 2001. Terry Nichols, who met McVeigh in the Army, was convicted of federal and state bombing charges and is serving life prison sentences.

Another Army buddy, Michael Fortier, pleaded guilty to not telling authorities in advance about the bomb plot and agreed to testify against McVeigh and Nichols. Fortier was released from a federal prison in January 2006 after serving most of a 12-year sentence.

Prosecutors said the bombing was a twisted attempt to avenge the deaths of about 80 people in the government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.

Survivors to Remember Okla. City Bombing, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Okla-Bombing-Anniversary.html

Anglonautes > History > USA > 21st century > 11 September 2001 - 9/11

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