Reporting a 12 months later, New York’s comptroller would calculate the economic value to the town at between $83 and $95 billion. ON September 11, after the second collapse, there was at rst a long, empty moment, a vacuum in time. Then the start of an epic, heartrending, restoration operation. Suspicion that Saudi Arabia had supported the hijack operation was rife for some time after 9-11, then faded—not a lot as a outcome of there was no evidence however as a end result of the suspicion was snu ed out. The chance of Saudi involvement, an important issue, might be a serious focus in the closing chapters of this book.
He rst mentioned that someone as a end result of arrive from abroad would be paying for his onward travel, then that another “someone” was waiting for him in Arrivals. Secondary inspector José Meléndez-Pérez noted, too, that the topic was belligerent. “He began pointing his nger … Whatever he was saying was in a loud voice—like ‘I am in charge—you’re not going to do something to me. This was the one event, after a collection of ine ciencies involving the terrorists, that an alert INS o cial had actually carried out his job. KSM was to admit under interrogation that the suspect had certainly been despatched to the States to affix the terrorist staff —to “round out the variety of hijackers.” It is rational to think that, however for the inspector’s acumen, there would have been ve somewhat than four hijackers aboard United Flight ninety three. With Kahtani’s further muscle—Meléndez-Pérez remembered him as having appeared trim, “like a soldier”—they may need been better in a position to resist the passengers’ try and retake the cockpit.
There is nothing to indicate that federal companies have probed further. In late May 2011, however, it was reported that a go well with led by lawyers for bereaved U.S. relations would include revealing testament from three Iranian defectors. It had yet lentzban reviews to surface, and the three defectors who had testified remained unidentified. Points, had not requested the FBI to trace them down if they had been in the nation, till nineteen days before 9/11.
By his personal account, nevertheless, he saved very much abreast of developments. That month, he wrote in 2007, he had directed his counterterrorism unit to review old files—and thus took part of the credit score for the “discovery” that Mihdhar and Hazmi might be in the United States. To be no reality to allegations made after 9/11 that several of the terrorists, including Atta, drank alcohol to extra. Lehman’s clear memory, although, is that Atta and Shehhi have been partial to a beer at the finish of the day. “Two, possibly, however they never—ever— overindulged.” IN EARLY AUGUST, the diligent Ziad Jarrah was awarded his Private Pilot License. He headed back to Germany in the fall to spend a quantity of weeks together with his girlfriend, Aysel.
It can be sufficient, he mentioned, merely to bring airliners down, not essentially to strike speci c targets. This was at the time of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, that followed then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s provocative go to to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Bin Laden, KSM said, wished to be seen to retaliate in opposition to Israel’s principal supporter. As he would repeatedly, KSM resisted bin Laden’s strain.
When the expertise grew to become out there, his operatives would use the Internet as an on an everyday basis tool. Omar noticed that his father now spent much time recording his ideas on a dictating machine. The fruit of his newest considering came in August 1996, with a fax transmission to the o ce of al-Quds al-Arabi— o r The Arab Jerusalem—an Arabic-language newspaper printed in London. It was a twelve-thousand-word message from the mountain, in bin Laden’s words from “the summit of the Hindu Kush,” one which on the time got little coverage within the West. Across the Middle East, where hundreds of thousands of copies were distributed in cassette type, it had a significant impact. Hijacked Flight 11, he had suddenly heard an unfamiliar voice on the frequency—a man’s voice, with an Arabic accent.
His father was an imam, his mother a lady who obtained work getting ready women’s bodies for burial. The driving drive for KSM, though, was the trigger of Palestine. Kuwait teemed with Palestinian exiles, and antipathy towards Israel early on became a part of KSM’s make-up. At eighteen, in 1983, Khalid traveled to the United States to study engineering at faculties in North Carolina. A fellow pupil remembered him as “so, so smart,” targeted on getting his degree— although he took half enthusiastically in novice theater projects.
In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and KSM were taking precautions. Bin Laden ordered some followers to disperse, others to remain on excessive alert. “My mom,” he had urged her, “come back to actual life.” Najwa asked her husband for permission to go away, and he agreed on one situation.
On rst inspection, there gave the impression to be few objects on the surface greater than a couple of toes long. The voice recorder, recovered days later, could be found buried twelve toes under the ground. There were no our bodies, it appeared, solely shreds of clothes hanging from the timber. For some time, a white cloud of “sparkly, shiny stu like confetti” oated within the sky.
They and fellow college students had to use a computer offered by the varsity to arrange for a written check, and different people usually had to wait their turn. One day, nevertheless, as Ann Greaves waited outdoors for Atta and Shehhi to emerge from the pc room, she realized they were not engaged on the check at all. She heard hushed voices talking in Arabic, then an outburst of what appeared like delight. “I went into the room,” she recalled, “and they were hugging one another and kind of slapping one another on the back … I truly have no method of figuring out what it was that made them so pleased.” What will surely have made Atta and Shehhi pleased was the news— on the 12th of the month—that got here out of Yemen. Trial within the mid-1990s for plotting to bomb New York landmarks, had been supported with GID cash. Osama bin Laden himself, who had made his name under GID course through the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan, remained a hero for many.
