The Long Fuse - Blinking Red - transcript
Disclaimer: a dramatization based on public records, including The 9/11 Commission Report, court filings and trial testimony. Some scenes and dialogue are reconstructed or composited. Voices are AI-generated and are not intended to resemble any real person. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any person or agency depicted. Allegations in court filings are unproven claims. No private victim is named beyond the public record, and people the Commission identified only by pseudonym keep those pseudonyms.

[0:07] Analyst: Okay. Okay, okay. Who took the last of the coffee and put the pot back empty? Animals.

[0:16] Analyst: Overnight. Same. Same. More.

[0:21] The Record: There is a kind of person whose whole job is reading. Cables, intercepts, reports from foreign services. In the spring of two thousand one, the people who did that job all noticed the same thing at about the same time. There was more.

[0:39] The Record: The Commission put it in one sentence. "In the spring of 2001, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks increased dramatically to its highest level since the millennium alert."

[0:52] Analyst: Come on. Come on. Thank you.

[0:55] The Record: The President would receive a page about it in August. You heard that page at the end of the last episode. This is how the summer got there.

[1:07] The Record: From Will Sigmon Media. This is The Long Fuse. Episode two. Blinking Red.

[1:15] The Record: As before, what you'll hear comes from the public record, mostly the 9/11 Commission Report. The documents are read as written. A few short scenes are reconstructed; the people in them are composites, and their words are ours. Where the record is uncertain, we'll say so.

[1:34] The Record: Every morning, the President read a short document called the President's Daily Brief: six to eight brief articles, chosen by the CIA, and shown to only a handful of people. Between the inauguration and September tenth, two thousand one, more than forty of those articles related to bin Laden.

[1:53] The Record: A wider version, the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief, went to a broader group of officials. It carried less detail, to protect sources. The Attorney General, the FBI Director and the White House counterterrorism coordinator got that one, not the President's. The Commission printed some of that spring's headlines. Hear them in order, because the order is the story.

[2:18] The Record: In April, the counterterrorism group at the White House discussed reports about a man named Abu Zubaydah, who had been a major figure in the plots around the millennium. The next day, April twentieth, a briefing to top officials read: "Bin Ladin planning multiple operations."

[2:35] The Record: In May, as the Commission puts it, "the drumbeat of reporting grew louder." Two more headlines. "Bin Ladin public profile may presage attack." And, "Bin Ladin network's plans advancing."

[2:49] The Record: The group that discussed those reports was chaired by the White House's national coordinator for counterterrorism, a career official named Richard Clarke. On May twenty-ninth, Clarke wrote to the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, about the threat from Abu Zubaydah. The Commission quotes one sentence from that note.

[3:11] The Record: "When these attacks occur, as they likely will, we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them."

[3:19] The Record: That same month, the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, Cofer Black, gave Rice a number. On a scale of one to ten, he said, the threat was a seven. During the millennium, it had been an eight.

[3:36] The Record: In June the reporting surged. The Commission wrote that it reached "an even higher peak of urgency." And it pointed abroad: to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen, perhaps Rome. The danger, the Commission adds, could be anywhere, including at a summit of world leaders in Genoa, Italy.

[3:58] The Record: A late-June threat advisory warned of a high probability of near-term "spectacular" attacks. Two more headlines followed. "Bin Ladin Attacks May be Imminent." "Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats."

[4:15] The Record: On June twenty-eighth, Clarke wrote to Rice again. The pattern of al Qaeda activity over the past six weeks, he wrote, "had reached a crescendo." "A series of new reports continue to convince me and analysts at State, CIA, DIA, and NSA that a major terrorist attack or series of attacks is likely in July."

[4:38] The Record: One al Qaeda intelligence report warned that something "very, very, very, very" big was about to happen. On June thirtieth, the headline was "Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks." That same day, Saudi Arabia declared its highest level of terror alert.

[4:57] The Record: Not everyone was sure the threats were real. Some officials wondered whether they were deception, whether bin Laden was trying to study how America would react. The same day's brief carried an article with a title that answered them: "Bin Ladin Threats Are Real."

[5:13] The Record: Twenty countries took part in operations to disrupt al Qaeda cells that summer. Several operatives were detained abroad. The Commission says those operations may have averted attacks on two or three American embassies. Clarke and others feared an attack on the Fourth of July. It passed quietly. The alert stayed up.

[5:36] The Record: Not every report pointed abroad. A few pointed home, and the Commission lists them too.

[5:42] The Record: In early May, a walk-in to the FBI claimed there was a plan to attack London, Boston and New York. On May sixteenth, a phone call to an American embassy warned that bin Laden's supporters were planning an attack in the United States using "high explosives." The next day, that report topped the agenda of Clarke's counterterrorism group.

[6:05] The Record: And on June twelfth, a CIA report passed along background on several terrorists. In a comment about one of them, it said he was recruiting people to travel to the United States, to meet colleagues already there, so that they might carry out attacks on bin Laden's behalf.

[6:23] The Record: The report called him "Khaled". CIA headquarters presumed, from the details, that he was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In July, the source was shown photographs and picked out his. If you heard the last episode, you know who he was. The CIA, in June two thousand one, did not. In the Commission's words, he "was seen primarily as another freelance terrorist, associated with Ramzi Yousef." His links to bin Laden and al Qaeda "were not recognized at the time."

[6:56] The Record: Ten days later, the CIA told all its station chiefs about intelligence suggesting a possible al Qaeda suicide attack on an American target over the next few days. The State Department warned every embassy. The warnings were real, and they went everywhere. They still had no address.

[7:19] The Record: Overseas, the government acted as if an attack were coming. On June twenty-first, near the height of the reporting, U.S. Central Command raised the force protection level for American troops in six countries to the highest possible level: Delta.

[7:36] The Record: The U.S. Fifth Fleet moved out of its port in Bahrain. A Marine Corps exercise in Jordan was halted. American embassies in the Persian Gulf ran emergency security reviews, and the embassy in Yemen was closed. Emergency response teams stood ready to move on four hours' notice, on what the Commission calls a "rolling 24 hour basis."

[7:59] The Record: On July fifth, Vice President Cheney contacted the Saudi crown prince, Abdullah. That same day, the CIA briefed Attorney General Ashcroft. He was told that a significant attack was imminent, that preparations for multiple attacks were in late stages or already complete, and that little additional warning could be expected. The briefing addressed only threats outside the United States.

[8:24] The Record: Later that month, because of threats, Italy closed the airspace over Genoa and mounted antiaircraft batteries at the airport for the G-8 summit. The President was there.

[8:36] The Record: And on July thirty-first, the FAA sent the aviation community a circular about "reports of possible near-term terrorist operations," particularly on the Arabian Peninsula and in Israel. It said the FAA had no credible evidence of specific plans to attack U.S. civil aviation. It also noted that some active terrorist groups were known to "plan and train for hijackings."

[9:01] The Record: Warships moved. Embassies closed. Antiaircraft guns went up in Italy. Almost everything that summer pointed outward.

[9:13] The Record: At home, the warnings went out too. On July second, the FBI's Counterterrorism Division sent a message to federal agencies and to state and local police. It summarized the threats from bin Laden, and it said this:

[9:35] The Record: "The FBI has no information indicating a credible threat of terrorist attack in the United States." It added that an attack at home could not be discounted. It asked recipients to "exercise extreme vigilance" and "report suspicious activities." It did not, the Commission notes, suggest any specific actions to prevent an attack.

[9:51] The Record: On July fifth, representatives of the domestic agencies came to the White House to meet Clarke: Immigration, the FAA, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, Customs, the CIA and the FBI. The briefing focused on threats overseas. The attendees told the Commission they had been asked not to disseminate what they'd heard. They took that to mean they could brief their bosses, but not send advisories to the field. A White House official remembered that instruction differently. The Commission records both accounts.

[10:24] The Record: On July ninth, as a result of that meeting, thirty-seven officials from twenty-seven agencies and organizations were briefed on the threat and told to "exercise extreme vigilance."

[10:36] The Record: Here is the Commission's diagnosis of that summer, in its own words.

[10:41] The Record: "The domestic agencies were waiting for evidence of a domestic threat from sleeper cells within the United States. No one was looking for a foreign threat to domestic targets. The threat that was coming was not from sleeper cells. It was foreign—but from foreigners who had infiltrated into the United States."

[11:02] The Record: By then, those foreigners had been inside the country for months. One of them had been here more than a year.

[11:12] The Record: The Federal Aviation Administration could order new security at checkpoints and on aircraft. It did issue a few directives that summer. The Commission found that none of them increased security at checkpoints or on board aircraft.

[11:27] The Record: Its information circulars, the Commission says, mostly urged the airlines to "exercise prudence" and be alert.

[11:35] The Record: Before September eleventh, the FAA had also given airlines and airports a presentation on a CD-ROM about the increased threat to civil aviation. It mentioned the possibility of suicide hijackings. And it said this: "fortunately, we have no indication that any group is currently thinking in that direction."

[11:56] The Record: Between May first and September eleventh, the FAA gave twenty-seven special security briefings to individual airlines. Two discussed the threat of hijacking overseas. None discussed suicide hijackings, or aircraft used as weapons. No new security measures were put in place.

[12:14] The Record: At the FBI, the head of counterterrorism told the Commission he had felt deeply that something was going to happen. But the threat information, he said, was "nebulous." He wished he had had "500 analysts looking at Usama Bin Ladin threat information instead of two."

[12:35] The Record: On July tenth, an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office in Arizona sent a memo to headquarters, and to two agents on international terrorism squads in New York.

[12:46] Clerk: Mail's going. Anything else for Washington? Okay.

[12:50] The Record: The memo advised of what it called the "possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Ladin" to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools. The agent's theory rested on what he called an "inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest" at flight schools in Arizona.

[13:09] The Record: He made four recommendations. Compile a list of civil aviation schools. Establish liaison with them. Discuss his theory with the intelligence community. And seek authority to obtain visa information on people applying to flight schools.

[13:25] The Record: The Commission's account of what happened next is short. "His recommendations were not acted on." The managers of the two headquarters units it was addressed to did not see it until after September eleventh. The New York office took no action.

[13:40] The Record: And then the Commission is fair to everyone, including the author. As he told investigators, the memo was not an alert about suicide pilots. His worry was closer to the bombing of Pan Am Flight one-oh-three: explosives placed on an aircraft. Its references to aviation training were broad, including aeronautical engineering.

[14:02] The Record: An agent in Arizona had written down an idea about flight schools. It was the right category of worry. It pointed at no one in particular. And in July of two thousand one, that was the problem with everything.

[14:19] The Record: In late July, because of the threats, Italy closed the airspace over Genoa and put anti-aircraft batteries at the airport for the summit of world leaders. The President attended. It passed.

[14:34] The Record: The Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, gave the Commission a phrase for that summer, and the Commission used it as the title of the chapter you are hearing. In his world, Tenet told them, "the system was blinking red." By late July, he said, it could not "get any worse."

[14:53] The Record: In mid-July, reporting began to suggest that bin Laden's plans had been delayed, perhaps by as long as two months, but not abandoned. On July nineteenth, the acting FBI director told his field chiefs on a conference call to have evidence teams ready to move at a moment's notice in case of an attack. The Commission notes that he did not ask the field offices to look for plots inside the United States.

[15:19] The Record: On July twenty-seventh, Clarke told Rice and Hadley that the spike in reporting had stopped. He urged them to keep readiness high through the August vacation. Another report, he warned, suggested an attack had only been postponed for a few months, "but will still happen."

[15:35] The Record: One senior official at the Counterterrorist Center told the Commission that he and a colleague had considered resigning that summer, in order to go public with their concerns.

[15:47] Analyst: Overnight. Same. Same.

[15:52] The Record: On August first, the FBI issued another advisory. Most of the reporting, it noted, pointed to attacks on American interests abroad, but an attack in the United States could not be discounted. On August third, the intelligence community concluded that the threat of impending al Qaeda attacks would likely continue indefinitely.

[16:14] The Record: Then came the question in Crawford, the President's question to his briefers: did any of this point to the United States? The answer, on August sixth, had a title you already know. "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US."

[16:30] The Record: The President later told the Commission that he saw the article as historical in nature. The Commission records that no meeting of Clarke's group, or of the National Security Council, was held to discuss the possibility of a strike in the United States as a result of it. And it adds a sentence of its own: "We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States."

[17:05] The Record: On Monday, August thirteenth, a man began training at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis. Pan Am trained airline crews on simulators of the Boeing seven-four-seven.

[17:19] The Record: He had none of the usual qualifications. He said he did not intend to become a commercial pilot. He wanted the training, he said, as an "ego boosting thing." With little knowledge of flying, the Commission says, he wanted to learn to "take off and land" a Boeing seven-four-seven.

[17:38] The Record: Two days later, on August fifteenth, a manager at the school picked up the phone and called the FBI's Minneapolis field office. By the Inspector General's account, he said that he and his co-workers were training a student they considered suspicious. The student had paid eight to nine thousand dollars for the course in cash. That same day, the Minneapolis office opened an intelligence investigation. The student's name was Zacarias Moussaoui. He was a French national, and he had overstayed his visa.

[18:11] The Record: The agent on the case learned quickly that Moussaoui held jihadist beliefs. He had thirty-two thousand dollars in a bank account and no plausible explanation for it. He became agitated when he was asked about his travel and about his religion. The agent wrote that he believed Moussaoui was "an Islamic extremist preparing for some future act in furtherance of radical fundamentalist goals." He also believed the plan was related to the flight training.

[18:39] The Record: The most important thing, the agent decided, was to stop him getting any more training. Because of the visa overstay, Moussaoui could be held at once. The immigration service took him into custody the next day, August sixteenth. A deportation order was signed on August seventeenth.

[18:58] The Record: What Minneapolis wanted to do next, and what it could not get Washington to agree to, is the story of the last days of that summer. We'll come back to it. First, we have to go back much further, to a fuse that was lit more than half a century earlier, when a man from Egypt stepped off a ship in New York.

[19:20] The Record: August fifteenth. Twenty-seven days.