Khalid Muhammad Abdallah al-Mihdhar was a Saudi terrorist hijacker. He was one of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77,which was flown into the Pentagon as part of the 11 September attacks.
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian-born Islamic dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his death in 2011. Ideologically a pan-Islamist,he participated in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union and supported the activities of the Bosnian mujahideen during the Yugoslav Wars. Bin Laden is most widely known as the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks in the United States.
George John Tenet is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency,as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
Operation Infinite Reach was the codename for American cruise missile strikes on al-Qaeda bases that were launched concurrently across two continents on 20 August 1998. Launched by the U.S. Navy,the strikes hit the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum,Sudan,and a camp in Khost Province,Afghanistan,in retaliation for al-Qaeda's August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,which killed 224 people and injured over 4,000 others. Operation Infinite Reach was the first time the United States acknowledged a preemptive strike against a violent non-state actor.
Walid Muhammad Salih bin Mubarak bin Attash is a Yemeni prisoner held at the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges and is suspected of playing a key role in the early stages of the 9/11 attacks. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has described him as a "scion of a terrorist family". American prosecutors at the Guantanamo military commissions allege that he helped in the preparation of the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings and the USS Cole bombing and acted as a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden,gaining himself the reputation of an "errand boy". He is formally charged with selecting and helping to train several of the hijackers of the September 11 attacks.
On September 11,2001,19 al-Qaeda terrorists took control of four commercial aircraft and used them as suicide weapons in a series of four coordinated acts of terrorism to strike the World Trade Center in New York City,The Pentagon in Arlington County,Virginia,and an additional target in Washington,D.C. Two aircraft hit the World Trade Center while the third hit the Pentagon. A fourth plane did not arrive at its target,but crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after a passenger revolt. The intended target is believed to have been the United States Capitol. As a result,2,977 victims were killed,making it the deadliest foreign attack on U.S. soil,exceeding Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Honolulu,Hawaii,on December 7,1941,which killed 2,335 members of the United States Armed Forces and 68 civilians. The effort was carefully planned by al-Qaeda,which sent 19 terrorists to take over Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 aircraft,operated by American Airlines and United Airlines.
The Saddam–al-Qaeda conspiracy theory was based on false claims by the United States government alleging that a secretive relationship existed between Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda between 1992 and 2003. The George W. Bush administration promoted it as a main rationale for invading Iraq in 2003.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks,the United States declared the war on terror and subsequently led a multinational invasion of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The stated goal was to dismantle al-Qaeda,which had executed the attacks under the leadership of Osama bin Laden,and to deny Islamist militants a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by toppling the Taliban government. The United Kingdom was a key ally of the United States,offering support for military action from the start of the invasion preparations. The American military presence in Afghanistan greatly bolstered the Northern Alliance,which had been locked in a losing fight with the Taliban during the Afghan Civil War. Prior to the beginning of the United States' war effort,the Taliban had seized around 85% of Afghanistan's territory as well as the capital city of Kabul,effectively confining the Northern Alliance to Badakhshan Province and smaller surrounding areas. The American-led invasion on October 7,2001,marked the first phase of what would become the 20-year-long War in Afghanistan.
The September 11 attacks,commonly known as 9/11,were four coordinated Islamist suicide terrorist attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda against the United States on September 11,2001. That morning,19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the East Coast to California. The hijackers crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City,two of the world's five tallest buildings at the time,and aimed the next two flights toward targets in or near Washington,D.C.,in an attack on the nation's capital. The third team succeeded in striking the Pentagon,the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense in Arlington County,Virginia,while the fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania during a passenger revolt. The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people,making them the deadliest terrorist attack in history,and instigated the multi-decade global war on terror,fought in Afghanistan,Iraq,and elsewhere.
The Bin Laden Issue Station,also known as Alec Station,was a standalone unit of the Central Intelligence Agency in operation from 1996 to 2005 dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden and his associates,both before and after the 9/11 attacks. It was headed initially by CIA analyst Michael Scheuer and later by Richard Blee and others.
Hassan Ghul,born Mustafa Hajji Muhammad Khan,was a Saudi-born Pakistani member of al-Qaeda who revealed the kunya of Osama bin Laden's messenger,which eventually led to Operation Neptune Spear and the death of Osama Bin Laden. Ghul was an ethnic Pashtun whose family was from Waziristan. He was designated by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee of the Security Council in 2012.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Mission Center forCounterterrorism is a division of the CIA's Directorate of Operations,established in 1986. It was renamed during an agency restructuring in 2015 and is distinct from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC),which is a separate entity. The most recent publicly known Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Mission Center was Chris Wood who led the organization from 2015 to 2017.
Several sources have alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ties with Osama bin Laden's faction of "Afghan Arab" fighters when it armed Mujahideen groups to fight the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War.
After the Central Intelligence Agency lost its role as the coordinator of the entire United States Intelligence Community (IC),special coordinating structures were created by each president to fit his administrative style and the perceived level of threat from terrorists during his term.
The Afghanistan conflict began in 1978 and has coincided with several notable operations by the United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The first operation,code-named Operation Cyclone,began in mid-1979,during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. It financed and eventually supplied weapons to the anti-communist mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan following an April 1978 coup by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and throughout the nearly ten-year military occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). Carter's successor,Ronald Reagan,supported an expansion of the Reagan Doctrine,which aided the mujahideen along with several other anti-Soviet resistance movements around the world.
An Afghan jihadist camp,or an Afghan training camp,is a term used to describe a camp or facility used for militant training located in Afghanistan. At the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001,Indian intelligence officials estimated that there were over 120 jihadist camps operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan,run by a variety of militant groups.
At around 9:30 pm on September 11,2001,George Tenet,director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) told President George W. Bush and U.S. senior officials that the CIA's Counterterrorism Center had determined that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for the September 11 attacks. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks on September 11,2001,the Federal Bureau of Investigation connected the hijackers to al-Qaeda,a militant Salafist Islamist multi-national organization. In a number of video,audio,interview and printed statements,senior members of al-Qaeda have also asserted responsibility for organizing the September 11 attacks.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington,D.C.,by the al-Qaeda terrorist group,a number of investigations were conducted to determine what intelligence may have existed before the attacks and whether this information was ignored by authorities.
John Christopher Wood is a retired operations officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. After the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001,he was part of the initial team of seven CIA officers that entered Afghanistan in pursuit of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban just 15 days after the attacks. Later he held prominent positions,including Kabul station chief and director of the Counterterrorism Mission Center (CTMC).
The following is an outline of the series of events that led up the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021).
