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Carol Roberts.Carol Roberts. [Source: BBC]Officials in Palm Beach County vote 2-1 to delay their manual recounts of their election ballots (see November 11-12, 2000) until they are able to clarify whether they have the legal authority to proceed. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), has rejected requests to extend the election certification deadline past 5:00 p.m. today (see 9:00 a.m. November 13, 2000). (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Leip 2008) Harris actually issues an order stopping the recounts, but her order is almost immediately countermanded by Florida Attorney General Robert Butterworth (Dickenson 11/19/2000) , who serves as the Gore campaign’s Florida chairman. (National Journal 11/9/2000) The canvassing board meeting is contentious. The lead Republican counsel, Mark Wallace, demands that County Commissioner Carol Roberts recuse herself from the board because of her “active” involvement in the Gore campaign. Roberts responds that her activity includes having a Gore bumper sticker on her car and attending a single cocktail party for Joe Lieberman, Al Gore’s running mate. Election observer Steven Meyer, working with the Democratic Party, writes that he has never heard Republicans complain about Harris’s involvement as co-chair of the Bush campaign. Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore has come under intense scrutiny and criticism for the controversial “butterfly ballot” that she approved for use in the county (see September 2000); many county Democrats blame her for what they believe were some 10,000 votes that should have gone to Gore (see November 9, 2000). Some board members, including LePore, have received death threats; whether these threats came from Republicans, Democrats, or others is unknown. Meyer observes that Republicans such as Wallace mount incessant complaints about ballot handling, and issue frequent demands that already-counted stacks of ballots be recounted again because someone touched or handled them inappropriately. Meyer observes Republican observers using tweezers to pick up tiny “chads” (paper rectangles discarded when a voter punches through a punch-card ballot to cast a vote) and place them in plastic baggies. He also notes that Republicans have placed thousands of Gore ballots in the “questionable” stacks when the ballots plainly indicate votes for Gore. (Meyer 12/14/2000)

Former Reagan administration cabinet member James Baker, leading the Bush campaign’s legal challenges to the Florida recount process (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000), makes public statements recommending that the Gore campaign drop its advocacy of the recounts and accept the 5:00 p.m. tallies (see Evening, November 14, 2000). A senior advisor to the Gore campaign, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, declines, saying, “That’s like offering you the sleeves from your vest.” (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000)

Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis upholds Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris’s decision to require complete election certification by 5:00 p.m. today (see 9:00 a.m. November 13, 2000). Harris is the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After). Lewis says supplemental returns can be filed after the deadline, but Harris can ignore them after circumstances are considered and if she uses what Lewis calls “proper exercise of discretion.” Observers expect the Gore campaign to file an appeal with the Florida Supreme Court. Officials in Volusia County—joined later by Broward and Palm Beach Counties—move to appeal Lewis’s ruling. (Circuit Court of the Second Judicial Circuit In and For Leon County, Florida 11/14/2000 pdf file; Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004; Leip 2008)

Notwithstanding a deadline imposed by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (see 9:00 a.m. November 13, 2000), the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), the Palm Beach County canvassing board votes to resume its manual recount of its election ballots (see 8:20 a.m. November 14, 2000) on Wednesday, November 15. It also votes to submit its machine-count results to Harris by the deadline, and continue the manual recounts in the hope it can resubmit its modified tallies at a later date. (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Leip 2008)

After her self-imposed deadline of 5:00 p.m. for election results certification passes (see 9:00 a.m. November 13, 2000), Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), announces that George W. Bush (R-TX) leads Vice President Al Gore (D-TN) by some 300 votes, based on returns submitted by all 67 Florida counties. The 300-vote lead Bush currently has is substantially smaller than the 1,784-vote lead he had immediately after the election. Harris says she will comply with a judicial order to consider late returns (see Afternoon, November 14, 2000). She gives three heavily Democratic counties still counting votes until 2:00 p.m. November 15 to submit written explanations as to why they want to add their manual-recount tallies after the deadline; all three counties will comply with her request. (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Leip 2008)

Contradicting her previous statement that she would comply with a judicial order to consider the post-election recount tallies from several counties (see Evening, November 14, 2000), Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), asks the Florida Supreme Court to force Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties to end their manual recounts (see November 14, 2000, 3:40 p.m. November 15, 2000, and 4:30 p.m. November 14, 2000) “pending resolution as to whether any basis exists to modify the certified results” after the November 14, 2000 deadline. Harris argues that manual recounts threaten “the integrity of the ballots.” Harris previously imposed a November 14 deadline for all ballots to be counted and results certified (see 9:00 a.m. November 13, 2000). Palm Beach County officials ask the Florida Supreme Court to decide if they can manually recount their ballots. At 5:00 p.m., the Court rejects Harris’s request to stop the recounts. (Dickenson 11/19/2000; Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Leip 2008) A judge has already ruled that Harris can refuse to consider recount results submitted after her deadline (see Afternoon, November 14, 2000). A Gore campaign spokesman later says that considering the obstacles Harris has placed in the way of the hand recounts, the situation is analogous to a policeman forcing a motorist to pull over, then blaming him for the traffic piling up behind him. Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes counters with the accusation that the counties still engaged in recounts are “no longer counting ballots; they are ‘reinventing’ them.” And James Baker, the head of the Bush “quick response” recount team, accuses the manual recounters of “subjective” attempts to “divine the intent of the voter.” Such recounts, Baker says, present “tremendous opportunities for human error and… mischief.” Both Hughes’s and Baker’s remarks are apparently intended to imply deliberate falsification of vote tallies, and echo similar charges made by Rush Limbaugh and other conservative media figures. Gore officials note that George W. Bush has picked up 418 votes in manual recounts in six counties: Franklin, Hamilton, Seminole, Washington, Taylor, and Lafayette. The Bush campaign, the Gore officials say, was eager to have those votes added in with the totals. Baker’s counterpart on the Gore team, Warren Christopher, says the fact that “Republicans have hand counted in many of the counties themselves” (see November 19, 2000) belies Republican charges that “we have picked out a certain few counties.” The Bush campaign has also picked up 143 votes from recounting in Volusia County. (Dickenson 11/19/2000; Consortium News 11/27/2000)

The presidential campaign of George W. Bush (R-TX—see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000) joins in a motion filed by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), to stop all manual ballot recounts in Florida (see 8:00 a.m. November 15, 2000). Harris imposed a deadline of 5:00 p.m. November 14 for all recounts to be completed and all results certified (see 9:00 a.m. November 13, 2000 and Evening, November 14, 2000). The request is rejected by a federal judge later in the day. (Leip 2008)

Ignoring Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris’s decision that all counties must have certified their election vote results by yesterday afternoon (see 9:00 a.m. November 13, 2000), the Broward County canvassing board reverses its earlier decision (see Evening, November 13, 2000) and decides to conduct a full manual recount of all 587,928 ballots cast there. Harris (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After) says she will not count new tallies submitted by either Broward or Palm Beach Counties (see 4:30 p.m. November 14, 2000). (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Leip 2008)

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), announces that she will not consider any further submissions of recounted election ballots from any Florida counties (see Evening, November 14, 2000). She has already accepted submissions from three counties still conducting recounts (see November 14, 2000, 3:40 p.m. November 15, 2000, and 4:30 p.m. November 14, 2000), and has received written explanations from three counties—Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach—explaining why they need additional time to complete their recounts. Palm Beach explained that it had found serious discrepancies between the results of its machine and sample manual recounts. Broward told of a large voter turnout and accompanying logistical problems. Miami-Dade said it had reason to believe that a manual recount would provide significant differences in its results (see November 7, 2000). Harris announces that she finds all three counties’ explanations insufficient and will not include their recount tallies in her final election numbers. (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004; Leip 2008)

The Bush presidential campaign rejects the Gore presidential campaign’s proposal for a statewide manual recount of Florida’s presidential votes (see 6:36 p.m. November 15, 2000), stating that such a recount would be neither fair nor accurate. George W. Bush also informs the Gore campaign that he has no interest in meeting with Al Gore face-to-face, though he says he is open to such a meeting after the election. (Leip 2008) “The outcome of this election,” Bush says in a statement, “will not be the result of deals or efforts to mold public opinion” (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000). (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000)

Shortly after the presidential vote that resulted in an as-yet-unresolved flurry of recounts and criticisms (see 6:36 p.m. November 15, 2000 and 9:14 p.m., November 15, 2000), two law clerks at the US Supreme Court laugh about the unlikely possibility that the election will end up being resolved in the Court. Could it happen that way? they wonder. And if so, would the Court split 5-4 along ideological lines, with the conservative majority giving Governor George W. Bush (R-TX) the presidency? The idea is preposterous, they decide, no matter what some of their friends and relatives are predicting. Even the most conservative of Court justices, they say, are pragmatic and mindful of the law. Moreover, they tell one another, the Court has always steered clear of sticky political conflicts. And the conservative justices are the most mindful of states’ rights and most devoted to the concept of the Constitution’s “original intent,” including the Founders’ insistance that Congress, not the judiciary, should be the body to resolve close elections. One clerk later tells reporters: “It was just inconceivable to us that the Court would want to lose its credibility in such a patently political way. That would be the end of the Court.” As November moves closer to December and the election fracas continues unresolved, a law professor predicts that Bush’s chances before the Court are “between slim and none, and a lot closer to none.” Over Thanksgiving, the justices and clerks leave Washington for vacation, with only a skeletal staff of a few clerks remaining in town in case of emergencies. Justice Stephen Breyer says over the holiday that there is no way the Court would ever get involved in the election. (Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004)

Lawyers for the Bush presidential campaign (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000) submit written arguments to the US Federal Appeals Court in Atlanta demanding that Florida immediately halt all recounts (see 8:00 a.m. November 15, 2000 and 12:00 p.m., November 15, 2000), calling manual recounts “unconstitutional.” Three Florida counties are still engaged in manual recounts (see November 14, 2000, 3:40 p.m. November 15, 2000, and 4:30 p.m. November 14, 2000). Democrats file papers with the same court opposing the Republican motion. (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Leip 2008)

Lawyers for the Gore presidential campaign ask Judge Terry Lewis (see Afternoon, November 14, 2000) to require Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After) to include recount ballot tallies made after her November 14 deadline (see 9:14 p.m., November 15, 2000). Gore lawyer Dexter Douglas tells Lewis: “She says, ‘You can only have a hand count in case of mechanical failure or hurricane.’ And the attorney general said that’s a bunch of bunk” (see 9:00 a.m. November 13, 2000). (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000) The next day, Lewis will rule that Harris has the power to ignore late-filed returns (see 10:04 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. November 17, 2000).

The US puts out an international arrest warrant for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). The warrant seeks KSM in connection with the 1995 Bojinka plot (see January 6, 1995). (Hall 3/13/2003) It is not clear why the US waited so long to issue this warrant, considering that the US connected him to a major terrorist act back in 1993 (see March 20, 1993), learned he was a major figure in the Bojinka plot in 1995 (see After February 7, 1995-January 1996), secretly indicted him in January 1996, and placed a $2 million reward on his head in January 1998 (see January 8, 1998).

Leon County Judge Terry Lewis rules that Florida law gives Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), “broad discretionary authority to accept or reject late-filed returns,” referring to recounts submitted after Harris’s November 14 deadline (see 9:14 p.m., November 15, 2000). After Lewis issues his ruling, Harris issues a statement hinting she is poised to certify the election when the absentee ballots are in by noon on November 18 (see November 18, 2000). An hour after the ruling, James Baker, representing the Bush campaign team, says George W. Bush and his running mate Dick Cheney “are understandably pleased” with Lewis’s finding. “The rule of law has prevailed,” he says. Gore campaign lawyer Warren Christopher warns against premature “partying” by Republicans, and says the campaign is taking Lewis’s ruling to the Florida Supreme Court. This afternoon, the Florida Supreme Court puts a hold on Lewis’s decision, citing a pending appeal by the Gore campaign (see 5:00 p.m. November 17, 2000). (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Leip 2008)

The Florida Supreme Court bars Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), from rejecting all post-deadline recount tallies (see 9:14 p.m., November 15, 2000) as well as certifying George W. Bush (R-TX) as the state’s presidential winner “until further order of this court” (see 10:04 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. November 17, 2000). It sets a hearing for Monday, November 20 to hear arguments on the recount dispute. The Court says flatly, “it is NOT the intent of this order to stop the counting.” (Supreme Court of Florida 11/17/2000 pdf file; Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Leip 2008) Harris is prepared to certify Bush as the winner (see Evening, November 14, 2000), which would give him the electoral votes needed to grant him the presidency (see November 9, 2000). With that no longer a possibility, James Baker, the leader of the Bush “quick response” campaign recount team (see Mid-Morning, November 8, 2000), issues a public threat: the incoming Florida speaker of the House, Republican Tom Feeney, will, if necessary, take matters into his own hands and vote in an independent slate of “electors” who would journey to Washington and vote for Bush in the US Electoral College. Because both houses of the Florida legislature are dominated by Republicans, Feeney could pass just such a bill authorizing that procedure. (Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004) Bush and his campaign officials harshly denounce the Court’s ruling. Bush accuses the Court of using “the bench to change Florida’s election laws and usurp the authority of Florida’s election officials,” and states that “writing laws is the duty of the legislature; administering laws is the duty of the executive branch.” However, the liberal news Web site Consortium News notes that Bush seems unaware of the duty of the judicial branch, “a fact taught to every American child in grade-school civics class—that it is the duty of the judiciary to interpret the laws. It is also the responsibility of the courts to resolve differences between parties under the law.” (Consortium News 11/23/2000)

Florida’s presidential vote tallies are adjusted, in line with state law, to reflect absentee ballots (see 12:00 a.m., November 17, 2000 and November 15-17, 2000). The slim lead belonging to George W. Bush (R-TX—see Evening, November 14, 2000) expands to 930 votes; Bush picks up 1,380 votes and Vice President Al Gore (D-TN) picks up 750 votes. (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Leip 2008) After the modified vote tallies are announced, Bush campaign officials begin publicly complaining of manual-recount irregularities. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000) Three Florida counties are either engaged in manual recounts or are preparing to recount (see November 17, 2000, 3:40 p.m. November 15, 2000, and 3:00 p.m., November 16, 2000).

The online news Web site Salon reports that while the Bush campaign opposes the Gore campaign’s requests for manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties (see Mid-Morning, November 8, 2000, November 8, 2000, November 9, 2000, 11:35 p.m. November 9, 2000, November 10, 2000, November 11-13, 2000, 9:00 a.m. November 13, 2000, 12:00 p.m., November 15, 2000, 10:15 p.m., November 15, 2000, Early Morning, November 16, 2000, 5:00 p.m. November 17, 2000, and 12:36 p.m. November 19, 2000), it quietly accepted voluntary manual recounts from four Florida counties that contributed 185 votes to the Bush tally. According to Salon, in those four counties—Seminole, Polk, Taylor, and Hamilton—elections officials took it upon themselves to manually count ballots that could not be read by machine, so-called “undervotes.” Those recounts are entirely legal. The Seminole recount garnered 98 votes for George W. Bush. Al Gore lost 90 votes in Polk County because the votes had apparently been counted twice. The Taylor recount garnered four votes for Bush. The Hamilton recount garnered 10 votes for Gore. (A similar report by the online news site Consortium News uses different counties—Franklin, Hamilton, Seminole, Washington, Taylor, and Lafayette—to note that Bush has garnered some 418 votes in those counties’ recounts.) Bush campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker says that under Florida law, county canvassing boards have the discretion as to whether to inspect uncounted ballots by hand, and says that the Gore campaign’s calls for recounts of undervotes in Miami-Dade County (see November 7, 2000) is another in its attempt to “continually try to change the rules in the middle of the game. The ballots were inspected by hand in some cases but not all, and under Florida law it’s the canvassing board’s decision legally. It’s our belief that these votes have been counted.” Gore spokesman Chris Lehane says the Gore campaign wants the same consideration given to Miami-Dade votes as given to votes in other counties. Moreover, Miami-Dade uses punch-card ballots, which yield far more errors than the “optiscan” balloting systems used in Seminole, Polk, Taylor, and Hamilton. “Keep in mind, punch cards are used in poorer areas,” he says. “Most of these other ballots were optical ones where the reliability was much, much higher. And in poorer areas, you have bad machines or flawed ballots. We think we have a pretty clear and compelling argument.” Senior Bush campaign adviser James Baker says that manually recounting votes in Democratic-leaning counties was comprised of “subjective” attempts to “divine the intent of the voter,” and that hand-counting votes provides “tremendous opportunities for human error and… mischief.” Democrats retort that Baker’s statement is hypocritical, and point to Bush’s gain in Republican-leaning counties as proof of both the accuracy of recounting and the need to count each vote. (Dickenson 11/19/2000; York 11/28/2000)

Bush campaign attorneys note that all the absentee ballots have been tallied (see November 18, 2000 and November 15-17, 2000). They ask the Florida Supreme Court to just instruct the State of Florida to name a winner of its presidential election (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000). (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000)

The Florida Supreme Court hears recount arguments from both the Gore and Bush presidential campaigns regarding whether Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), should consider hand-recounted ballots before she certifies results of the presidential election (see 5:00 p.m. November 17, 2000). Bush lawyers argue that the Court is “without power” to decide which ballots should or should not be tallied. At 9:45 p.m. November 21, the Court unanimously rules that the manual recounts can continue and that Harris must accept those totals in the final results (see 10:04 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. November 17, 2000). The Court rules that the deadline for certifying the election is either 5:00 p.m. November 26, a Sunday, or November 27, at Harris’s discretion. Harris’s staff is caught by surprise by the ruling, downloading it off the Internet instead of receiving a copy from the Court; Harris’s plan to certify George W. Bush as president is blocked. Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore welcomes the ruling, saying that both he and Bush should plan their transitions in case either is certified. (Supreme Court of Florida 11/21/2000 pdf file; Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Leip 2008) The Court says in its ruling that “the right of the people to cast their vote is the paramount concern overriding all others.” Campaign observers have said that if the Florida high court’s ruling went the other way, Gore would concede the election. Some of Gore’s senior campaign advisors reportedly told Gore to stop further challenges if the Florida court decision went in Bush’s favor. (Kettle and Borger 11/22/2000) Bush campaign representatives level charges that the Gore campaign is attempting to “steal” the election. Bush campaign attorney James Baker calls the Supreme Court’s ruling “unjust.” Governor Marc Racicot (R-MT), who has emerged in recent days as an influential Bush campaign spokesman, threatens “some extraordinary” measures to overcome the effects of the Court’s ruling (see 9:00 a.m. and after, November 22, 2000). (Kettle 11/23/2000)

The Bush presidential campaign files a petition in the US Supreme Court, asking the Court to review the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling that Florida can continue manual recounts, and that those new recount tallies be included in the final election results (see November 20-21, 2000). Bush lawyers argue that the Supreme Court effectively rewrote Florida election law in mandating the recount tallies be counted, by essentially changing the law after the election had occurred; they also argue that Florida judges have no jurisdiction or legal authoritiy to order Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After) to consider manually recounted votes. Both arguments are considered somewhat abstruse and technical. The Bush campaign also claims, with little legal backing, that to recount the votes violates constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection. Gore lawyers say that the matter is up to the state courts, and is not a federal matter warranting the involvement of the US Supreme Court. The Court agrees to hear the case, and sets the hearing date for December 1, 2000. (Supreme Court of the United States 11/22/2000 pdf file; Certiorari Granted 11/24/2000 pdf file; Guardian 11/25/2000; Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004; Leip 2008) “We believe we stand on both strong political and legal ground for fighting beyond Sunday,” says Gore campaign adviser Ron Klain. After the Court agrees to hear the case, Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team, says she is ready to certify the election for George W. Bush tomorrow night regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court hearing. “The Department of State is prepared for the earliest contingency, which would be certification Sunday evening,” her chief of staff Ben McKay says. “This will be done publicly regardless of the outcome, which is, of course, unknown at this time.” (Guardian 11/25/2000) Many Court observers, and some of the justices themselves, are surprised that the case is being heard. The Bush petition for certiorari, or for the Court to take the case, comes to Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose task it is to consider emergency motions from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. Kennedy pushes his colleagues to take the case, arguing that the Court is the true and ultimate arbiter of such matters, though he concedes that the Bush petition is legally questionable. The Court’s conservative bloc—Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O’Connor (see After 7:50 p.m. November 7, 2000), and Chief Justice William Rehnquist—agree to hear the case. (Court rules mandate that the consent of four justices, not a majority, is enough to hear a case.) The case is to be expedited in a way far different from the usual sedately paced Court proceedings. The sudden urgency has Court clerks scrambling to change their Thanksgiving plans and contacting the justices they work for. The clerks for the four liberal justices, David Souter, John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, are dismayed by the entire situation. “We changed our minds every five minutes about whether the fix was in,” one clerk later recalls. The liberal clerks find it almost impossible to believe that any Court justice would consider interceding in what is by constitutional definition an executive and legislative matter. Justice Stevens is not convinced of his conservative colleagues’ restraint, and begins drafting a dissent from what he fears will be a majority opinion granting Bush the election. The early draft focuses on the reasons why the Court should have never accepted the case. (Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004)

A photograph of the Republican operatives mobbing the Miami-Dade elections offices. Those identified in the photograph include Thomas Pyle, Garry Malphrus, Rory Cooper, Kevin Smith, Steven Brady, Matt Schlapp, Roger Morse, Duane Gibson, Chuck Royal, and Layna McConkey.A photograph of the Republican operatives mobbing the Miami-Dade elections offices. Those identified in the photograph include Thomas Pyle, Garry Malphrus, Rory Cooper, Kevin Smith, Steven Brady, Matt Schlapp, Roger Morse, Duane Gibson, Chuck Royal, and Layna McConkey. [Source: Pensito Review]Miami-Dade County election officials vote unanimously to halt the county’s manual recount of presidential ballots (see November 7, 2000 and Before 10:00 a.m. November 19, 2000), saying the county does not have enough time to complete its recount by the November 26 deadline. Instead, they vote to recount only 10,750 “undervotes,” ballots that don’t clearly indicate a presidential choice. The decision costs Democratic candidate Al Gore a 157-vote gain from the halted recount process. That evening, a Florida State appeals court denies a motion by Democrats to force Miami-Dade County to restart the manual recount. (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Leip 2008)
Opposing Beliefs - The next day, the Florida Supreme Court will also refuse to order Miami-Dade to restart the recount (see 2:45 p.m. November 23, 2000). Press reports say that the decision “dramatically reverse[s] the chances of Al Gore gathering enough votes to defeat George W. Bush.” Gore’s senior campaign advisor William Daley calls the recounts “mandatory” and calls for “the rule of law” to be upheld. For his part, Bush says: “I believe Secretary Cheney and I won the vote in Florida (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000). And I believe some are determined to keep counting in an effort to change the legitimate result.” In light of the Miami-Dade decision, the Bush campaign’s chief legal advisor James Baker invites the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature to unilaterally declare Bush the victor, saying, “One should not now be surprised if the Florida legislature seeks to affirm the original rules.”
Agitators Disrupt Recount Proceedings - The recount proceedings are disrupted and ultimately ended by a mob of Republicans, some local and some bussed and flown in from Washington by the Bush campaign. The agitators are protesting outside the Miami-Dade County election offices, shouting and attempting to interfere with the proceedings of the canvassing board. Republicans have accused a Democratic lawyer of stealing a ballot. (Kettle 11/23/2000; Guardian 11/25/2000)
Rioters Made Up of Republican Staffers, Others - Democrats accuse Republican protesters of intimidating the Miami-Dade County officials into stopping the recount. Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman says the demonstrations in Miami have been orchestrated by Republicans “to intimidate and to prevent a simple count of votes from going forward.” Six Democratic members of the US Congress demand the Justice Department investigate the claims, saying that civil rights have been violated in “a shocking case of undermining the right to vote through intimidation and threats of violence.” Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), says, “The Republicans are out of control,” and accuses them of using paid agitators to “create mob rule in Miami.” (Guardian 11/25/2000) Later investigations show that the “spontaneous protests” by Republican protesters were far more orchestrated and violent than generally reported by the press at the time. Investigative journalist Robert Parry will write that the protests, called the “Brooks Brothers Riot” because of the wealthy, “preppie” makeup of the “protesters,” helped stop the recount, “and showed how far Bush’s supporters were ready to go to put their man in the White House.” He will write that the protests should be more accurately termed a riot. At least six of the rioters were paid by the Bush recount committee, payments documented in Bush committee records only released to the IRS in July 2002 (see July 15, 2002). Twelve Republican staffers will later be identified in photographs of the rioters. The six who can be confirmed as being paid are: Bush staffer Matt Schlapp from Austin, Texas; Thomas Pyle, a staff aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX); DeLay fundraiser Michael Murphy; Garry Malphrus, House majority chief counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice; Charles Royal, a legislative aide to Representative Jim DeMint (R-SC); and former Republican House staffer Kevin Smith. Another Republican is identified as Doug Heye, a staffer for Representative Richard Pombo (R-CA). At least three of the rioters—Schlapp, Malphrus, and Joel Kaplan—will later join the Bush White House. Many of the rioters were brought in on planes and buses from Washington as early as mid-November, with promises of expenses payments. On November 18, 2000, the Bush campaign told activists, “We now need to send reinforcements” to rush to Florida. “The campaign will pay airfare and hotel expenses for people willing to go.” Many of the respondents are low-level Republican staffers from Congress. “These reinforcements… added an angrier tone to the dueling street protests already underway between supporters of Bush and Gore,” Parry will write. Quoting ABC reporter Jake Tapper, Parry will write, “The new wave of Republican activists injected ‘venom and volatility into an already edgy situation.’” Signifying the tone, before the Miami riot, Brad Blakeman, Bush’s campaign director of advance travel logistics, screamed down a CNN correspondent attempting to interview a Democratic Congressman: “This is the new Republican Party, sir! We’re not going to take it anymore!” (Consortium News 11/27/2000; Parry 8/5/2002; Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004) Some of the local protesters are summoned to the Miami-Dade electoral offices by angry broadcasts over radio stations with largely Cuban-American audiences; over these radio stations, listeners hear Bush campaign lawyer Roger Stone, coordinating the radio response, say that the recounts intend to disenfranchise Hispanic voters. Republican operatives coordinate the protests by shouting orders through megaphones. (Consortium News 11/24/2000; Alterman 12/9/2010) Cuban-Americans voted heavily for Bush in the November 7 election. (Tapper 3/2001)
Details of the Riot; Staffers Assaulted and Beaten - After learning that the Miami-Dade County canvassing board was beginning to examine 10,750 disputed ballots that had not previously been counted, US Representative John Sweeney (R-NY) issues the order to “Shut it down!” (Sweeney is coordinating his efforts with a local Cuban congressman who himself is coordinating the Cuban-American mob response.) Brendan Quinn, the executive director of the New York Republican Party, tells some two dozen Republican operatives outside the Miami-Dade County election offices to storm the room on the 19th floor where the canvassing board is meeting. Tapper later writes: “Emotional and angry, they immediately make their way outside the larger room in which the tabulating room is contained. The mass of ‘angry voters’ on the 19th floor swells to maybe 80 people,” including many of the Republican activists from outside Florida, and joined by local protesters. As news organizations videotape the scene, the protesters reach the board offices and begin shouting slogans such as “Stop the count! Stop the fraud!” “Three Blind Mice!” and “Fraud, fraud, fraud!” and banging on doors and walls. The protesters also shout that a thousand potentially violent Cuban-Americans are on the way. Official observers and reporters are unable to force their way through the shouting crowd of Republican operatives and their cohorts. Miami-Dade spokesman Mayco Villafena is physically assaulted, being pushed and shoved by an unknown number of assailants. Security officials, badly outmanned, fear the confrontation will swell into a full-scale riot. Miami-Dade elections supervisor David Leahy orders the recounts stopped, saying, “Until the demonstration stops, nobody can do anything.” (Although board members will later insist that they were not intimidated into stopping, the recounts will never begin again. Leahy will later say: “This was perceived as not being an open and fair process. That weighed heavy on our minds.”) Meanwhile, unaware of the rioting, county Democratic chairman Joe Geller stops at another office in search of a sample ballot. He wants to prove his theory that some voters had intended to vote for Gore, but instead marked an adjoining number indicating no choice. He finds one and leaves the office. Some of the rioters spot Geller with the sample ballot, and one shouts, “This guy’s got a ballot!” Tapper will later write: “The masses swarm around him, yelling, getting in his face, pushing him, grabbing him. ‘Arrest him!’ they cry. ‘Arrest him!’ With the help of a diminutive DNC [Democratic National Committee] aide, Luis Rosero, and the political director of the Miami Gore campaign, Joe Fraga, Geller manages to wrench himself into the elevator.” Rosero stays behind to attempt to talk with a reporter, and instead is kicked and punched by rioters. A woman shoves Rosero into a much larger man in what Tapper will later theorize was an attempt to start a fight between Rosero and the other person. In the building lobby, some 50 Republican protesters and activists swarm Geller, surrounding him. Police escort Geller back to the 19th floor in both an attempt to save him from harm and to ascertain what is happening. The crowd attempts to pull Geller away from the police. Some of the protesters even accost 73-year-old Representative Carrie Meek (D-FL). Democratic operatives decide to leave the area completely. When the mob learns that the recounts have been terminated, they break forth in lusty cheers.
After-Party - After the riots, the Bush campaign pays $35,501.52 for a celebration at Fort Lauderdale’s Hyatt Regency, where the rioters and campaign officials party, enjoy free food and drink, receive congratulatory calls from Bush and Dick Cheney, and are serenaded by Las Vegas crooner Wayne Newton, singing “Danke Schoen,” German for “thank you very much.” Other expenses at the party include lighting, sound system, and even costumes.
Media Reportage - Bush and his campaign officials say little publicly about the riot. Some press outlets report the details behind the riots. The Washington Post later reports that “even as the Bush campaign and the Republicans portray themselves as above the fray,” national Republicans actually had joined in and helped finance the riot. The Wall Street Journal tells readers that Bush offered personal words of encouragement to the rioters after the melee, writing, “The night’s highlight was a conference call from Mr. Bush and running mate Dick Cheney, which included joking reference by both running mates to the incident in Miami, two [Republican] staffers in attendance say.” The Journal also observes that the riot was led by national Republican operatives “on all expense-paid trips, courtesy of the Bush campaign.” And, the Journal will note, the rioters went on to attempt to disrupt the recounts in Broward County, but failed there to stop the proceedings. The Journal will write that “behind the rowdy rallies in South Florida this past weekend was a well-organized effort by Republican operatives to entice supporters to South Florida,” with DeLay’s Capitol Hill office taking charge of the recruitment. No similar effort was made by the Gore campaign, the Journal will note: “This has allowed the Republicans to quickly gain the upper hand, protest-wise.” And the Journal will write that the Bush campaign worked to keep its distance from the riots: “Staffers who joined the effort say there has been an air of mystery to the operation. ‘To tell you the truth, nobody knows who is calling the shots,’ says one aide. Many nights, often very late, a memo is slipped underneath the hotel-room doors outlining coming events.” But soon, media reports begin echoing Bush campaign talking points, which call the “protests” “fitting, proper,” and the fault of the canvassing board: “The board made a series of bad decisions and the reaction to it was inevitable and well justified.” The Bush campaign says the mob attack on the elections office was justified because civil rights leader Jesse Jackson had led peaceful, non-violent protests in favor of the recounts in Miami the day before. The campaign also insists that the protests were spontaneous and made up entirely of local citizens. On November 26, Governor Marc Racicot (R-MT), a Bush campaign spokesman, will tell NBC viewers: “Clearly there are Americans on both sides of these issues reflecting very strong viewpoints. But to suggest that somehow this was a threatening situation, in my view, is hyperbolic rhetoric.”
Effect of the Riot - According to Parry, the riot, broadcast live on CNN and other networks, “marked a turning point in the recount battle. At the time, Bush clung to a lead that had dwindled to several hundred votes and Gore was pressing for recounts (see November 20-21, 2000). The riot in Miami and the prospects of spreading violence were among the arguments later cited by defenders of the 5-to-4 US Supreme Court ruling (see 9:54 p.m. December 12, 2000)… that stopped a statewide Florida recount and handed Bush the presidency. Backed by the $13.8 million war chest, the Bush operation made clear in Miami and in other protests that it was ready to kick up plenty of political dust if it didn’t get its way.” In the hours after the riot, conservative pundits led by Rush Limbaugh will engage in orchestrated assaults on the recount process as fraudulent and an attempt by the Gore campaign to “invent” votes. No one is ever charged with any criminal behaviors as a result of the riot. (Consortium News 11/24/2000; Milbank 11/27/2000; Barrett 12/19/2000; Parry 8/5/2002; Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004; Alterman 12/9/2010)

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), rejects a request by Palm Beach County election officials to give them a brief extension on turning in their recount tallies (see 3:00 p.m., November 16, 2000). This morning, Republican lawyers successfully disrupted the recounting for an hour by arguing about the order in which precincts should be handled (see 4:00 a.m. November 26, 2000). The county misses the 5:00 p.m. deadline by less than three hours, and thusly leaves almost 2,000 ballots unrecounted, though officials continue to count the remaining ballots. Harris decides to reject Palm Beach’s request after conferring with Mac Stipanovich, a Florida Republican lobbyist serving as her political “handler” (see Mid-Morning, November 8, 2000). (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004; Leip 2008) Some media reports say that Democrat Al Gore picked up some 46 votes in the Palm Beach recount, though these votes are not added to the tally; Harris dubs Palm Beach’s entire recount null and void. (Kettle and Campbell 11/27/2000; Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004) Steven Meyer, an election observer for the Democratic Party, writes that when the 5:00 deadline arrived, election officials “had reviewed the challenged ballots in all but 51 of the 637 precincts and Gore had received a net gain of 192 votes in the manual recount.” The entire recount is finished by 7:20 p.m., and Gore’s net gain is 215 votes. Meyer learns that though Harris refused to accept the recount votes from Palm Beach County because it missed the deadline, she had accepted recounts from counties where Bush showed slight gains. Meyer writes, “This resulted in the 537 vote ‘official’ lead that the media is reporting.” Of the recount process itself, Meyer writes: “The Republican spin is that all votes have been counted by machine at least twice in every county. The only trouble is the machines don’t read every vote. The counting includes much more than simply reading the dimpled ballots. In our hand recount, we found many, many ballots on which the voter had indicated a preference, but not punched the ballot in the prescribed way. On some ballots, the voter had darkened in the numbers in each race for the candidate he or she wanted. On others, the voter punched out two different numbers, but wrote ‘Mistake’ or something equally as clear, with an arrow pointing to one of the holes. This shows clear intent to cast a vote for one candidate. The tabulating machine records this as an ‘overvote’ because more than one candidate’s number is punched, and the ballot is disqualified in the machine count.” (Meyer 12/14/2000)

Bush supporters in Florida celebrate Katherine Harris’s decision to certify Bush as the winner of the 2000 election.Bush supporters in Florida celebrate Katherine Harris’s decision to certify Bush as the winner of the 2000 election. [Source: Salon]Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), certifies George W. Bush (R-TX) the winner of Florida’s presidential election, though according to a Florida Supreme Court ruling she can choose to accept recount tallies through November 27 (see November 20-21, 2000). She chooses not to do so. Harris says Bush has a 537-vote lead. Her totals are: Bush, 2,912,790; Vice President Al Gore (D-TN), 2,912,253. The totals include none of the recounted ballots from either Palm Beach or Miami-Date Counties, both of which did not complete their recounts by Harris’s deadline (see 9:00 a.m. and after, November 22, 2000 and 2:45 p.m. November 26, 2000). Ongoing legal actions by both parties keep the election in doubt. Regardless, Governor Jeb Bush, George W. Bush’s brother, signs the Certificate of Ascertainment designating 25 Florida electors pledged to George W. Bush and transmits the document to the National Archives as required by Title 3, US Code, Section 6. Three days later, a Florida legislative committee will recommend a special session to name the state’s 25 representatives to the Electoral College, where they will presumably cast their votes for Bush. (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Leip 2008) If Bush is indeed the winner of the Florida presidential election, he has enough electoral votes to assume the presidency (see November 9, 2000). The Gore campaign refuses to accept Harris’s certification, and says it will ask Florida courts to order recounts of thousands of disputed votes. Gore’s running mate Joe Lieberman says, “This evening, the secretary of state of Florida has decided to certify what—by any reasonable standard—is an incomplete and inaccurate count of the votes cast in the state of Florida.” The Gore campaign is working out details of what will be a formal “contest” of the results, and will ask a state judge to order court-appointed “special masters” to complete interrupted recounts of about 2,000 uncounted votes in Palm Beach County and 10,700 uncounted votes in Miami-Dade County. They also want an inquiry into the Nassau County returns, where Gore officials believe Bush was wrongly credited with some 51 votes, and are considering challenging the legality of Palm Beach’s controversial “butterfly ballots.” Gore’s chief lawyer David Boies says: “We’re preparing contest papers that will be filed Monday, as early in the day as we can get them done. Until these votes are counted, this election cannot be over.” Republicans intend to use Harris’s ruling to publicly pressure Gore into conceding the election, pressure the Gore campaign says it is prepared to combat. Miami-Dade County, expected to yield enough votes in a recount to swing the election in favor of Gore, called off its recount under pressure from Republican protesters and due to time constraints (see 9:00 a.m. and after, November 22, 2000). (Salon 11/25/2000; Kettle and Campbell 11/27/2000; Kettle 11/28/2000) Investigative reporter Robert Parry will later write that Harris deliberately allowed Nassau County to throw out its recounted figures that gave Gore the 51 votes. (Parry 8/5/2002) A brief furor ensues when some media outlets mistakenly report that 500 absentee ballots “not previously counted” were discovered in Broward County. The story is not true. (Salon 11/25/2000) According to state law, it is only now that Gore can ask for a statewide recount. (Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004) Former President Jimmy Carter tells a reporter: “More than two weeks will remain before Florida’s 25 electors will have to be named, and then two more months before a new president will be sworn into office. We must not sacrifice speed for accuracy in deciding who has been chosen by the voters to take that oath.” (Salon 11/25/2000)

After Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), certifies George W. Bush (R-TX) the winner of Florida’s presidential election (see 7:30 p.m. November 26, 2000), the Bush campaign continues publicly—“ostentatiously,” to quote one London newspaper—preparing for Bush to transition into the White House, naming possible cabinet members and requesting that the General Services Administration (GSA) fund a transition office for Bush to prepare to ascend to the presidency. Andrew Card, a former General Motors executive whom Bush has said will be his chief of staff, says of Bush, “He’s getting ready to be a great president.” Bush’s chief of staff in Texas, Clay Johnson, heads the transition team and Ari Fleischer serves as press secretary. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) has told Senate committee chairpersons to convene their members on January 4, 2001 to begin confirmation hearings on Bush cabinet nominees. The GSA, however, has not gone along with the push. GSA officials say that the 80,000 square feet of Washington office space will stay locked until either Bush or Democrat Al Gore is certified as president. Instead, says Bush’s running mate Dick Cheney, the campaign will set up transition offices funded by private contributions. “We feel it is our obligation to the American people to honor their votes by moving forward and assembling the administration they’ve chosen,” he says. (Kettle 11/28/2000; Forbes 2011)

Pundit and editor Michael Kelly, recently fired by the New Republic for his continued partisan attacks on the Gore campaign, accuses Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and his campaign of trying to steal the Florida election, and the presidency, through the courts. Kelley says that Gore’s “theft” is being facilitated by the Democratic Party. Kelly falsely states that most polls show “60 percent to 70 percent” of Americans want Gore to concede immediately (see November 12 - December 10, 2000), and says, again falsely, that Democratic “leaders and elders” are working in “virtual lockstep” to “stand behind their defeated candidate’s unprecedented defiance of democracy’s national edict” (see November 8, 2000, Morning, November 8, 2000, and November 10, 2000). The “Clinton-Gore crowd,” Kelly writes, has “created a crisis that would wreak more destruction than” the Clinton impeachment. “But with these men of fathomless selfishness, there is always more damage to be done. There is always another institution, another principle, another person that must be destroyed—for the greater good of their greater power.” Kelly says that Gore has relentlessy ignored “the results of a fair and full recount that confirmed his loss (see Early Morning, November 8, 2000 and November 9, 2000), and demanded hand recounts only in selected Democratic counties” (see November 9, 2000). Kelly goes on to claim that Gore manipulated the Florida courts to “rewrit[e] Florida election law” to continue the standoff, “and still lost—a third time—to Bush.” When Gore promises to stand by the results of the manual recounts, Kelly says he is “lying” and has no such intentions. Kelly calls into question the Democratic election officials’ figures in Broward County, accusing the two Democratic officials of inventing votes over the objections of the single Republican official. Kelly concludes: “Democrats accuse Republicans of seeking to delegitimize a Gore presidency. Gore seeks more; if he doesn’t get his way he threatens to delegitimize democracy itself. Got to burn that village down.” (Kelly 11/29/2000; Alterman 12/9/2010)

A set of documents is forged implicating Iraq in an attempt to purchase 500 tons of uranium oxide, also known as “yellowcake,” from Niger. (Agence France-Presse 7/19/2003; Reuters 7/19/2003; Hersh 10/27/2003; Talking Points Memo 10/31/2003; Bonini and d'Avanzo 10/24/2005) It is possible that official stamps and letterhead stolen from the Niger embassy in Rome (see January 2, 2001) are used to fabricate the documents, though a subsequent police investigation suggests that the break-in may have been staged to provide a cover story for the origins of the documents. (Isikoff and Corn 2006, pp. 88) Material gleaned from real Italian intelligence (SISMI) documents dating back to the 1980s concerning Iraq’s yellowcake purchases from Niger during that period are also incorporated into the set of forged documents. (Bonini and d'Avanzo 10/24/2005; Collier 10/30/2005) But it is unclear who exactly is responsible for the forgeries. In August 2004, the Financial Times will report that according to Rocco Martino, the Italian information peddler who later tries to sell the documents, the documents are fabricated by SISMI, which passes them on to Martino through embassy employee Laura Montini, a paid SISMI asset. (Huband 8/2/2004) In October 2005, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica will suggest the forgery is done by Montini and fellow embassy employee Zakaria Yaou Maiga under the guidance of Martino and Antonio Nucera, the deputy chief of the SISMI center in Viale Pasteur in Rome. (Bonini and d'Avanzo 10/24/2005) In 2006, an official investigation will add support to this account, concluding that Montini and Maiga, motivated by money, were indeed the forgers of the documents. (Smith 4/9/2006) SISMI director Nicolo Pollari will later acknowledge that Martino had worked as a SISMI agent in the past, but deny any SISMI involvement in the Iraq-Niger affair. “[Nucera] offered [Martino] the use of an intelligence asset [Montini]—no big deal, you understand—one who was still on the books but inactive—to give a hand to Martino,” Pollari will explain. Author Craig Unger will observe that the issue is, if Pollari is to be believed, just one friend helping another friend by loaning him an intelligence asset to help disseminate forged documents. Martino has a different explanation: “SISMI wanted me to pass on the documents, but they didn’t want anyone to know they had been involved.” The information is quite contradictory. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica will call Martino “a failed carabiniere and dishonest spy,” and a “double-dealer” who “plays every side of the fence.” But Unger will later note that assets like him are valuable precisely because they lack credibility. “If there were a deep-cover unit of SISMI, it would make sense to hire someone like Rocco,” says former DIA analyst Patrick Lang. “His flakiness gives SISMI plausible deniability. That’s standard tradecraft for the agencies.” Until Martino stops talking to journalists in 2005, he will insist he believed the documents were authentic (see Summer 2004). “I sell information, I admit,” he will tell a London reporter. “But I only sell good information.” (Unger 2007, pp. 236)

David Boies.David Boies. [Source: BBC]The Florida Supreme Court hears arguments from both the Gore and Bush presidential campaigns in Al Gore’s appeal of a ruling that rejected his campaign’s request to mandate recounts in three Florida counties (see 9:00 a.m. November 30, 2000 and After). Bush campaign lawyer Barry Richard argues that there is no “evidence to show that any voter was denied the right to vote” and calls the Gore campaign’s contest “a garden-variety appeal.” Gore lawyer David Boies contends that while time is running out, “the ballots can be counted” before the December 12 deadline for naming electors. In a 4-3 decision, the Court reverses the decisions of Judge N. Saunders Sauls (see 4:43 p.m. December 4, 2000), ordering recounts of “undervotes” in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties as well as all other Florida counties that have not yet manually recounted undervotes. “Undervotes” are noted on ballots that were not recorded by voting machines as making a choice for president. The Court also directs the lower court to add 168 votes from Miami-Dade and 215 votes from Palm Beach to Gore’s state totals, narrowing the George W. Bush lead to a mere 154 votes. London’s Guardian observes, “That margin could easily be overturned with a recount of the disputed ballots which mainly came from Democratic precincts in Miami-Dade.” Perhaps 45,000 undervotes statewide remain to be counted. Bush campaign attorney James Baker says the Court’s ruling may “disenfranchise Florida’s votes in the Electoral College.” Congressional Democrats Richard Gephardt (D-MO) and Tom Daschle (D-SD) release a joint statement calling for a “full, fair, and accurate vote count,” and saying there is “more than enough time to count ballots cast but never counted.” Within hours, Bush lawyers ask the US Supreme Court for an emergency stay of the decision, which will be granted (see December 8-9, 2000). (Supreme Court of Florida 12/8/2000 pdf file; Borger and Kettle 12/9/2000; Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Leip 2008) The Court decision is also seen as something of a repudiation of the Supreme Court’s earlier decision for clarification (see 10:00 a.m. December 1 - 4, 2000). Clerks for the Supreme Court justices are now certain that their Court will decide the presidential election. Justice Antonin Scalia, the most implacable of the conservative justices determined to overturn the Florida high court and give the election to Bush, wants to grant the Bush request for a stay even before receiving the Gore lawyers’ response, a highly unusual request that is not granted. He argues that the manual recounts are in and of themselves illegitimate, and says the recounts will cast “a needless and unjustified cloud” over Bush’s legitimacy. It is essential, he says, to shut down the process immediately. Clerks for both the liberal and conservative justices are amazed, and some appalled, at how bluntly Scalia is pushing what appears to be a partisan agenda. (Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004)

An artist’s rendition of the nine Court justices hearing oral arguments in the ‘Bush v. Gore’ case.An artist’s rendition of the nine Court justices hearing oral arguments in the ‘Bush v. Gore’ case. [Source: Authentic History]The US Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments in the lawsuit Bush v. Gore on the Florida recounts and election results. The Bush campaign has challenged the legality of a Florida Supreme Court ruling mandating the recounting of “undervote” ballots (see December 7-8, 2000). Bush lawyers argue that manual recounts violate the Constitution’s mandate of equal protection. Gore lawyers argue that the overriding issue is the importance of counting each vote cast. By the afternoon, the public is hearing the arguments via audiotapes. Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Court’s most hardline conservatives, drew criticism when he said in an earlier opinion that the majority of the Court believed that George W. Bush had “a substantial probability of success,” a conclusion disputed by other justices such as John Paul Stevens. Scalia now says that he is inclined to vote in favor of Bush because, he says, “the counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm [to Bush]” (see December 8-9, 2000). (Kettle 12/11/2000; Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Leip 2008)
Kennedy Determines that 'Equal Protection' Is Key to Reversing Florida Decision - Al Gore’s lawyers, led by David Boies, believe that one of the Bush team’s arguments is flawed: the idea that the Florida Supreme Court exceeded its bounds restricts one appellate court far more than another appellate court is willing to condone. Unbeknownst to the Gore lawyers, Justice Anthony Kennedy agrees with the Gore team on this issue. Kennedy has no intention of finding in favor of the Gore position, but he does want the other four conservatives on the bench to come together behind the Bush argument that using different standards for ballot evaluation in different counties violates the equal-protection clause of the Constitution, an argument that most of the justices, litigants, and clerks have not considered up until now. As a practical matter, enforcing a single standard of ballot evaluation among the disparate Florida counties would be virtually impossible. And the Court under the leadership of Chief Justice William Rehnquist has, until now, been reluctant to interpret the equal-protection clause except in the narrowest of circumstances. Neither the Bush nor the Gore lawyers had given that argument a lot of attention, but it will prove the linchpin of the Court’s majority decision. As oral arguments proceed, and Kennedy pretends to not understand why this is a federal argument, clerks for the liberal justices find themselves sourly amused at Kennedy’s pretense. “What a joke,” one says to another. When Kennedy cues Bush lawyer Theodore Olson that he is interested in the equal protection clause as an argument—“I thought your point was that the process is being conducted in violation of the equal-protection clause, and it is standardless”—Olson quickly pivots and begins building his case under that rubric. Liberal justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter use the equal-protection argument to suggest that the best and simplest solution is simply to remand the case back to the Florida Supreme Court and ask it to set a uniform standard. Breyer has been working for days to convince Kennedy to join the four liberals in sending the case back to Florida, and for a time during the oral arguments, believes he may have succeeded. The liberal clerks have no such hopes; they believe, correctly, that Kennedy is merely pretending to consider the option. “He probably wanted to think of himself as having wavered,” one clerk later says. A brief private chat with Scalia and his clerks during oral arguments may have swayed Kennedy back into the fold, assuming he is wavering at all.
Demands for Identical Standards among All Florida Counties - Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (see After 7:50 p.m. November 7, 2000 and (November 29, 2000)) rails at Boies over the idea that the 67 counties cannot all have the same standards of ballot evaluation, and shows impatience with Boies’s explanation that for over 80 years, the Florida courts have put the idea of “voter intent” over identical ballot identification standards. (Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004)

In a 79-41 vote, the Florida House of Representatives, under Republican leadership, votes to approve 25 electors to the Electoral College (see 12:00 p.m. December 8, 2000) to cast Florida’s votes for George W. Bush (R-TX). Two of the 79 votes cast for the elector naming are Democratic. (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Leip 2008) After the US Supreme Court rules against the recounts and gives the election to Bush, the Legislature abandons the idea of naming an independent slate of electors (see 9:54 p.m. December 12, 2000). (Whitman et al. 12/13/2000)

The US Supreme Court issues a ruling in Bush v. Gore (see December 11, 2000) that essentially declares George W. Bush (R-TX) the winner of the Florida presidential election, and thusly the winner of the US presidential election (see Mid-to-Late November 2000). The decision in Bush v. Gore is so complex that the Court orders that it not be used as precedent in future decisions. The 5-4 decision is split along ideological lines, with Justices Sandra Day O’Connor (see After 7:50 p.m. November 7, 2000 and (November 29, 2000)) and Anthony Kennedy, two “moderate conservatives,” casting the deciding votes. In the per curium opinion, the Court finds: “Because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet the Dec. 12 date will be unconstitutional… we reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida ordering the recount to proceed.… It is obvious that the recount cannot be conducted in compliance with the requirements of equal protection and due process without substantial additional work.” The decision says that the recounts as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court suffer from constitutional problems (see December 7-8, 2000). The opinion states that differing vote-counting standards from county to county and the lack of a single judicial officer to oversee the recount violate the equal-protection clause of the Constitution. The majority opinion effectively precludes Vice President Al Gore from attempting to seek any other recounts on the grounds that a recount could not be completed by December 12, in time to certify a conclusive slate of electors. The Court sends the case back to the Florida Supreme Court “for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.” Four justices issue stinging dissents. Justice John Paul Stevens writes: “One thing… is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.” Justice Stephen G. Breyer adds that “in this highly politicized matter, the appearance of a split decision runs the risk of undermining the public’s confidence in the court itself.” (Per Curiam (Bush et al v. Gore et al) 12/12/2000; Whitman et al. 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/2000; Leip 2008)
Drafting Opinions - After oral arguments concluded the day before, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said that if they were to remand the case back to Florida, that order must go out immediately in light of the approaching deadline for certification of results; Stevens quickly wrote a one-paragraph opinion remanding the case back to Florida and circulated it, though with no real hope that it would be adopted. The five conservative justices are determined to reverse the Florida decision. For the rest of the evening and well into the next day, December 12, the justices work on their opinions. Stevens prepares the main dissent, with the other three liberal justices preparing their own concurrences. Stevens and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg find no support whatsoever for the equal-protection argument, and say so in their writings. Justices Breyer and David Souter give the idea some weight; Souter says that the idea of uniform standards is a good one, but these standards should be created and imposed by the Florida judiciary or legislature. Stopping the recounts solves nothing, he writes. It soon becomes apparent that neither Kennedy nor O’Connor share Rehnquist’s ideas on the jurisdiction of the Florida court, and will not join him in that argument. Kennedy writes the bulk of the majority opinion; as predicted, his opinion focuses primarily on the equal-protection clause of the Constitution. The liberal justices and clerks find Kennedy’s reasoning that stopping the recounts is the only way to ensure equal protection entirely unconvincing. Anthony Scalia circulates a sealed memo complaining about the tone of some of the dissents, asking that the dissenters not call into question the Court’s credibility. (His memo prompts Ginsburg to remove a footnote from her dissent commenting on Florida’s disenfranchised African-American voters; some of the liberal clerks see the incident as Ginsburg being bullied into compliance by Scalia. Subsequent investigations show that thousands of legitimate African-Americans were indeed disenfranchised—see November 7, 2000.) Kennedy sends a memo accusing the dissenters of “trashing the Court,” and says that the dissenters actually agree with his equal-protection argument far more than they want to admit. When he has a line inserted into his opinion reading, “Eight Justices of the Court agree that there are constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court that demand a remedy,” some of Stevens’s clerks angrily telephone Kennedy’s clerks and accuse them of misrepresenting Stevens’s position. They demand that the line be removed. Kennedy refuses, and Stevens rewrites his opinion so that he is no longer associated with the position. Kennedy is forced to rewrite the statement to say that “seven,” not “eight” justices agree with his position. One of Stevens’s clerks, Eduardo Penalver, tells Kennedy clerk Grant Dixton that what Kennedy had done was disgusting and unprofessional. Breyer and his clerks are also unhappy about Kennedy’s assertion, but take no action. The line prompts many in the media to claim, falsely, that the decision is a 7-2 split and not a 5-4. The main document, a short unsigned opinion halting the recounts, is written by Kennedy. Two portions are particularly notable: Kennedy’s assertion that the ruling applies only to Bush, and not to future decisions; and that the Court had only reluctantly accepted the case. “That infuriated us,” one liberal clerk later recalls. “It was typical Kennedy bullsh_t, aggrandizing the power of the Court while ostensibly wringing his hands about it.” Rehnquist, Scalia, and Justice Clarence Thomas join the decision, though Scalia is unimpressed with Kennedy’s writing and reasoning. Reportedly, he later calls it a “piece of sh_t,” though he will deny making the characterization.
Lack of Consensus - The lack of consensus between the conservative justices is relatively minor. Among the four liberal justices, though, it is quite pronounced—though all four wish not to end the recounts, only Stevens has a strong position and has stayed with it throughout the process. Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer were far less certain of their opposition, and resultingly, their dissents, unlike the impassioned Stevens dissent, are relatively pallid. Some of the liberal clerks say that the four’s lack of consensus helped the solid conservative majority stay solid: “They gave just enough cover to the five justices and their defenders in the press and academia so that it was impossible to rile up the American people about these five conservative ideologues stealing the election.”
Final Loss - Gore, reading the opinion, finally realizes that he and his campaign never had a chance with the five conservative justices, though they had hoped that either O’Connor or Kennedy would join the four liberals (see (November 29, 2000)). He congratulates his legal team, led by David Boies, and commends it for making it so difficult for the Court to justify its decision. Some reports will circulate that Souter is depressed over the decision, with Newsweek reporting that he later tells a group of Russian judges that the decision was “the most outrageous, indefensible thing” the Court had ever done. He also reportedly says that had he had “one more day,” he could have convinced Kennedy to turn. However, Souter will deny the reports, and those who know him will say that such comments would be out of character for him. For her part, O’Connor will express surprise that anyone could be angry over the decision. As for Scalia, some Court observers believe that his open partisanship during the process will cost him any chance he may have had to be named chief justice. (Margolick, Peretz, and Shnayerson 10/2004)

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and June 2, 1997) gives up on his appeals and asks to be executed. In an affidavit, McVeigh writes: “I believe I am fully competent to make this decision. If the court thinks that a psychological evaluation is necessary to make certain I am competent, I will submit to such an evaluation. I will not justify or explain my decision to any psychologist, but will answer questions related to my competency.” He acknowledges that he makes his request against the advice of his attorneys, and asks that Judge Richard P. Matsch set an execution date within 120 days. McVeigh’s lawyer Nathan Chambers says that McVeigh has been considering this decision for some time now. “This is not a snap decision,” Chambers says. “The judge is going to want to make a determination that Mr. McVeigh’s decision is a decision he made voluntarily and knowingly.” McVeigh gives no further explanation, though some believe he intends to become a martyr for the far-right “patriot” movement. Eight days later, Matsch grants McVeigh’s request. (Cart 12/13/2000; The Oklahoman 4/2009; Mayhem (.net) 4/2009)

Damaged cars from the Christmas Eve bombings.Damaged cars from the Christmas Eve bombings. [Source: SBS Dateline]Al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) sets off two series of bombs, first in Indonesia, then in the Philippines. The Christmas Eve attacks in Indonesia comprise a series of 38 bombings in 11 cities and are directed against churches. Nineteen people are killed and over a hundred injured. (LaMoshi 10/8/2004) The attacks in the Philippines kill 22 and injure 120 in the country’s capital, Manila. The operation, involving attacks on a train, a bus, an abandoned petrol station, an airport car park, and a park, is apparently carried out by Indonesian JI operative Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi. (BBC 2/27/2002) Many militants are arrested after the attacks. The investigation leads to JI and al-Qaeda leader Hambali, a veteran Islamic fighter who was involved in the Bojinka plot (see January 6, 1995), is tied to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (see June 1994), and attended an al-Qaeda Malaysia summit in 2000, which was monitored by Malaysia intelligence and the CIA (see January 5-8, 2000). Although Hambali, an Indonesian, has lived in Malaysia since the mid-1990s, the authorities cannot find him and say that he has fled to Saudi Arabia (see January 2001 and after). (Jakarta Post 2/7/2001) JI’s spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, is also arrested, but then released. (CNN 2/26/2004) Hambali will finally be captured in August 2003 in Thailand (see August 12, 2003). In February 2001, evidence will come out suggesting links between some of the bombers and the Indonesian military (see February 20, 2001).

The Bush team moves into Washington. Neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad heads the Pentagon transition team, and he ensures that plenty of his friends and colleagues move into the civilian offices of the Defense Department. Four of the most influential advocates for the US overthrow of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein—Elliott Abrams, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Abram Shulsky—are waiting to learn where they will serve in the department. But Vice President Cheney is still concerned with ensuring the placement of his own colleagues and cronies who will help him build what many will call the “imperial presidency.” Secretary of State Colin Powell, Cheney’s ideological rival, is working to install his friend and colleague Richard Armitage as deputy secretary of defense. For Cheney, Armitage would be a calamity—although Armitage is sufficiently hardline and in line with conservative foreign policy aims, he is far too centrist for Cheney and the neoconservatives. The neoconservative magazine the Weekly Standard alerts the faithful to the potential problem with an article entitled “The Long Arm of Colin Powell: Will the Next Secretary of State Also Run the Pentagon?” Powell does not get his wish; Armitage eventually becomes deputy secretary of state. Abrams will join the National Security Council; Khalilzad, Feith, and Shulksy will join the Defense Department; and Perle will head the Defense Policy Board, an independent group that advises the Pentagon. (Rees 12/25/2000 pdf file; Unger 2007, pp. 115, 191-192, 204, 249)

Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Muslim militant later alleged by the Bush administration to have ties to Osama bin Laden, is allegedly arrested in Jordan sometime in 2001 for his involvement in a late 1999 plot to blow up the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan (see November 30, 1999). This is according to an unnamed Bush administration official. Supposedly, some time after his arrest, he is released. (Borger 10/9/2002; Pincus 2/7/2003 Sources: Unnamed Bush administration official) However, there are no contemporary press accounts of this arrest and release, and no signs of a trial. According to other accounts, at some point he is convicted for his role in the plot and sentenced to death by a Jordanian court in absentia. (Buncombe and Milmo 2/6/2003)

An official of the Embassy of Niger in Rome returns to the embassy to find that it has been burglarized some time over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The embassy offices are located in a large apartment and office building near the Piazza Mazzinni. Little of value seems to be missing: a wristwatch, some perfume, bureaucratic documents, embassy stationery, and some official stamps bearing the seal of the Republic of Niger. The documents and materials stolen from the embassy will be used to create forged documents alleging a secret plan for Iraq to buy uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, October 15, 2001, October 18, 2001, November 20, 2001, February 5, 2002, March 1, 2002, Late April or Early May 2002-June 2002, and Late June 2002). (Unger 7/2006, pp. 150; Unger 2007, pp. 189-190) It appears that the people involved in the break-in also searched through and took some of the embassy’s documents and files. (Isikoff and Thomas 7/28/2003; Bonini and d'Avanzo 10/24/2005) The first comprehensive report on the burglary will come from a 2005 series of reports in Italy’s La Repubblica news daily. The series is based on interviews with SISMI director Nicolo Pollari, former SISMI agent and document peddler Rocco Martino (see March 2000, Late June 2002, Afternoon October 7, 2002, and Summer 2004), and others. Martino will deny participating in the burglary himself, and will claim he only became involved after SISMI had its agent in the embassy, Laura Montini, deliver to him documents secured from the embassy. “I was told that a woman in the Niger embassy in Rome had a gift for me” (see Early 2000), he will later recall. “I met her and she gave me documents.” (Rufford 8/1/2004; Unger 2007, pp. 207) Italian police will later suspect that the break-in was staged to provide an explanation for how a collection of mostly forged documents (which play an important role in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq) came into being. (Isikoff and Corn 2006, pp. 88)

Former anti-abortion activist Jerry Reiter, the author of the recent book Live From the Gates of Hell: An Insider’s Look at the Anti-Abortion Underground, gives an interview to the St. Petersburg Times about his book and his days with the controversial anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue (OR—see 1986). Reiter was media coordinator for the group, but after becoming disillusioned with its violent tactics, became an FBI informant, giving the FBI information on OR and other anti-abortion groups. Reiter now says that some respected conservative Christians have tacitly condoned the violence practiced by OR and other anti-abortion groups during the 1990s. “One of the things that surprised me about the Christian Coalition was that even though it publicly denounced the illegal tactics of groups like Operation Rescue,” Reiter wrote, “when the big national anti-abortion protest came to Buffalo in 1992, Operation Rescue National housed its secret command and communication offices in the basement suite of offices that the Christian Coalition of New York had as its state headquarters.” He says that after entering “the secret command post of Operation Rescue, I was given books on dozens of not-so-peaceful activities, including a book by Reverend Michael Bray advocating the bombing of abortion clinics” (see September 1994). Reiter says that many anti-abortion activists “use the Bible to justify all kinds of evil.” He is still against abortion, but does not advocate legal restrictions on the practice. “I want to see abortions reduced,” he says. “Sex education, birth control, and availability of health care options is the way to go. Those people who oppose abortion are often those who oppose sex education, birth control, and other health care options.” Explaining why he became an FBI informant, Reiter says of his OR colleagues, “I realized that these people were very serious about doing harm to people.” He recalls speaking with Paul Hill, who in 1994 murdered an abortion provider and his bodyguard (see July 29, 1994). Weeks before Hill killed the two men, he told Reiter: “What you’re gonna see next now, brother, is an IRA-type reign of terror [referring to the Irish Republican Army]. There’s too much pressure on all of us, too many people watching us to do anything major under direct orders from the national level, so what you’re gonna see is individuals or small groups of people takin’ action in their own hands to do what the leaders want to see done, but since there won’t be any direct orders given, no one can prove conspiracy.” Reiter says his information did not prevent Hill’s murders, but was able to prevent another spate of possibly lethal violence during a 1994 event in Florida. “If I hadn’t done something at the time, it’s likely they would have been successful and hundreds could have been killed.… I had the most unique background. I was able to see the most radical, most dangerous people in the country as they were formulating their plans.” Reiter concludes: “The mainstream anti-abortion movement has shrunk dramatically and now you just see more hard-core people. It’s not a calm situation. The days of the little old ladies with the rosaries have been replaced with this radical, vitriolic group.… The people around Paul Hill, once he is executed (see September 3, 2003), they are planning to rise up and take action. They are planning to give us unprecedented violence.” (Moore 1/6/2001)

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and June 2, 1997) again says he wants to drop any further appeals (see March 8-9, 1999 and December 13, 2000) and asks to be executed. Judge Richard P. Matsch sets his execution date for May 16, 2001. (Douglas O. Linder 2001; Fox News 4/13/2005)

George W. Bush taking the oath of office.George W. Bush taking the oath of office. [Source: White House/ Wally McNamara]George W. Bush is inaugurated as president, replacing President Bill Clinton. Bush is sworn in after a tumultuous, sharply disputed election that ended with a US Supreme Court decision in his favor (see 9:54 p.m. December 12, 2000). He takes the oath of office on the same Bible his father, George H.W. Bush, used in his own 1989 inauguration; the oath is administered by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In his brief inaugural address, delivered outside the US Capitol, Bush asks Americans to “a commitment to principle with a concern for civility.… Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.” In words apparently chosen to reflect on the criticisms surrounding former President Clinton and his notorious affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Bush says, “I will live and lead by these principles—to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for responsibility, and try to live it as well.” He continues addressing the American people, saying: “I ask you to be citizens. Citizens, not spectators. Citizens, not subjects. Responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character.” At a post-ceremonial luncheon, Bush issues a series of executive orders, some designed to block or roll back several Clinton-era regulations. He also acknowledges that because of the election turmoil, many Americans believe “we can’t get anything done… nothing will happen, except for finger-pointing and name-calling and bitterness.” He then says: “I’m here to tell the country that things will get done. Republicans and Democrats will come together to do what’s right for America.” (Bruni and Sanger 1/21/2001)
Thousands of Protesters - Thousands of protesters line the streets during Bush’s ceremonial drive to the Capitol, a fact not heavily reported by many press outlets. Salon reports, “Not since Richard Nixon paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1973 has a presidential inauguration drawn so many protesters—and last time, people were out to protest the Vietnam War.” Though Capitol Police refuse to estimate the size of the crowd lining the street, Salon reports that “many thousands of protesters were in evidence.” Liz Butler of the Justice Action Movement, the umbrella organization that helped coordinate the protests, says: “The level of people on the streets shows that people are really upset about lack of democratic process. They took it to the streets. We saw tens of thousands. We saw far more protesting Bush than supporting him.” Some of the people on the streets are Bush supporters, but many more are not, and carry signs such as “Bush Cheated,” “Hail to the Thief,” “Bush—Racism,” “Bushwhacked by the Supremes,” and others. The crowd, though outspoken in its protests and unrestrained in its heckling of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, is generally peaceful, and no serious violence is reported, though a few minor altercations do take place, and large contingents of police in riot gear—including personnel from every police department in the District of Columbia as well as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and from departments in Maryland and Virginia—are on hand. At least one protester throws an egg at the limousine transporting Bush, Cheney, and their families to the inaugural ceremonies; perhaps in response to the protests, Bush breaks with tradition laid down by earlier presidents and does not walk any large portion of the parade route. Nine people are arrested for disorderly conduct, most for allegedly throwing bottles and other debris. Bulter says: “Of course, we’re ashamed that Bush has decided to be a ‘uniter’ by uniting people against him. They all chose to come out in the freezing rain—even the weather couldn’t stop these people.” Protester Mary Anne Cummings tells a reporter: “I think it’s important to remind the incoming administration the country does not want a right-wing mandate. They did not vote for a right-wing mandate.” (Lindsey 1/20/2001; CNN 1/20/2001; Bruni and Sanger 1/21/2001) Thousands of protesters march in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities as well. (CNN 1/20/2001)

Shortly after George W. Bush is inaugurated, “[k]ey personnel, long-time civilian professionals” at the Pentagon’s Near East South Asia (NESA) desk are moved or replaced with people from neoconservative think tanks. (Kwiatkowski 12/1/2003; Dreyfuss and Vest 1/2004) Joe McMillan, the Office Director, is moved to a new location outside of the Pentagon, which according to Karen Kwiatkowski, who works at the NESA desk, is odd because “the whole reason for the Office Director being a permanent civilian (occasionally military) professional is to help bring the new appointee up to speed, ensure office continuity, and act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies.” (Kwiatkowski 12/1/2003; Dreyfuss and Vest 1/2004; Kwiatkowski 3/10/2004) Larry Hanauer, who has long been at the Israel-Syria-Lebanon desk and who is known to be “even-handed with Israel,” is replaced by David Schenker of the Washington Institute. (Kwiatkowski 12/1/2003; Dreyfuss and Vest 1/2004) Other veteran NESA employees who are banished include James Russell, who has served as the country director for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and Marybeth McDevitt, the country director for Egypt. (Dreyfuss and Vest 1/2004)

The Bush White House alleges that officials and aides from the outgoing Clinton administration vandalized the White House in the last days before Bush officials took over. Conservative news site NewsMax reports that the “slovenly misfits” of the Clinton administration “left the [White House] in a shambles” in the transition between the outgoing Clinton administration and the incoming Bush administration. Clinton aides engaged in “deliberate vandalism,” the report says, and cites a General Services Administration (GSA) official estimating that it may cost up to $250,000 to repair the damage. NewsMax quotes a report by another conservative publication, the American Spectator, which itself quotes “an inspector… called in to assess the vandalism as saying that several executive desks were damaged to the point that they must be replaced, and several more offices must be repainted because of graffiti.” (Kettle 1/26/2001; NewsMax 1/26/2001) Conservative Internet gossip writer Matt Drudge reports that “White House offices [were] left ‘trashed’” and so-called “[p]orn bombs [and] lewd messages” were left behind. No explanation of what Drudge meant by the “porn bomb” allegation is ever given. (Curl 1/27/2001) The allegations of vandalism and theft will prove to be almost entirely false (see February 8, 2001, February 14, 2001, and May 18, 2001).
Gore's Staffers Charged with Worst of Vandalism - British newspaper The Guardian repeats earlier claims that the worst of the damage was found in offices once occupied by staffers for former Vice President Al Gore, and that Gore’s wife, Tipper, has phoned Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, to apologize for the damage. The story is false (see January 24, 2001). (Kettle 1/26/2001)
Reports: Cut Phone Lines, Extensive Damage, Pornographic Photos - Both the Washington Post and The Guardian report allegations that computer and telephone lines were “sliced,” voice-mail messages were changed to “obscene remarks and lewd greetings,” desks were overturned, and trash strewn throughout the premises. The reports add that filing cabinets were glued shut with Superglue, pornographic photographs displayed in printers, and “filthy graffiti scrawled on at least one hallway wall.” The Spectator’s inspector adds that “[e]ntire computer keyboards will have to be replaced because the damage to them is more extensive than simply missing keys,” referring to allegations that some White House keyboards had the “W” keys pried off. The Spectator also reports tales of former Clinton staffers reportedly “laughing and giggling about the mess their former colleagues left behind.” A Bush White House official calls the White House “a pigsty” in the aftermath of the transition. “The Gore and Clinton people didn’t ‘clean out’ the place because there was nothing clean about what they did before they left.” The GSA will pursue the former Clinton officials for reimbursement and expenses. The Spectator reports that “investigators” conclude the damage was “the result of a carefully organized campaign of vandalism unlike anything ever seen in the aftermath of a presidential transition.” (NewsMax 1/26/2001; Kettle 1/26/2001; Allen 1/26/2001) The New York Daily News reports, “The destruction was so vast that a telecommunications staffer with more than a quarter-century of service was seen sobbing near his office one night last week.” (DeFrank 1/27/2001) CNN’s Paula Zahn observes: “All right, but this is the White House, for God’s sakes. We’re not talking about people living in a fraternity.” (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting 5/21/2001) Fox News is particularly vehement in its coverage. “They trash[ed] the place,” says Fox commentator Sean Hannity. ”$200,000 in furniture [was] taken out.” Fellow Fox commentator Oliver North (see May-June, 1989) adds: “We should expect from white trash what they did at the White House.… I recommend that what the Bush White House do is peel the wallpaper off that they defaced with their graffiti and ship it off to the Clinton Library so people can see it.” Fox host Bill O’Reilly says, “I mean, the price tag right now is about $200,000, so that’s a felony right there.” And O’Reilly guest Tom Schatz says, referring to the famous film about fraternity life, “They turned it into Animal House.” (Goldstein 2/8/2001; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting 5/21/2001)
Air Force One 'Stripped Bare,' Reports Claim - The Guardian also reports that during former President Clinton’s last trip in Air Force One, the presidential jet was subjected to what it calls “an orgy of pilfering” (see January 25-27, 2001). It was “stripped bare” by aides, who reportedly took china, silverware, salt and pepper shakers, and other items, most bearing the presidential seal. (Kettle 1/26/2001) On Fox, Hannity charges, “They strip[ped] Air Force One of the china and everything else that wasn’t bolted down.” (Goldstein 2/8/2001)
Clinton Officials Admit to 'Pranks,' Bush Officials Allege Attempts at Theft - Clinton and Gore officials deny the reports of vandalism, but admit to carrying out pranks such as removing the “W” keys and affixing satirical signs to office doors that read, “Office of Strategery,” “Office of Subliminable Messages,” and “Division of Uniting.” A former Clinton official says, “It’s childish, but it’s also funny.” However, a senior Bush official accuses Clinton staffers of attempting to steal White House paintings and official seals from doors, and attempting to have those items shipped to themselves; Bush officials have ordered that all packages leaving the White House be X-rayed. (Allen 1/26/2001)
Bush Aide Documenting Damages - A Bush White House aide has been delegated to document the vandalism, videos are being taken of the damages, and White House officials are being interviewed. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer has confirmed that the administration is reviewing reports of the alleged vandalism. (NewsMax 1/26/2001) Bush himself downplays the reports, saying: “There might have been a prank or two, maybe somebody put a cartoon on the wall, but that’s okay. It’s time now to move forward.” (DeFrank 1/27/2001)

Conservative columnist John Derbyshire writes a column for the National Review claiming that many racial and ethnic stereotypes are not only accurate, they are socially desirable and useful. Derbyshire claims that “[a]nthropology, psychology, sociology, and genetics are all” proving “that human nature is much more like what conservatives have always said it was like than it is like what leftists have believed.” Derbyshire cites a single source, the widely discredited book The Bell Curve, which purported to show that non-whites were genetically and intellectually inferior to whites, to prove his claim, before segueing into the main portion of his column, which focuses on a 1995 book called Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences. Written by three academics and published by the American Psychological Association, Derbyshire claims that the book proves cultural, racial, and ethnic stereotyping is based largely on fact. He writes of the book’s central thesis, “Far from being a loathsome aberration that ought to be purged from our behavior, it turns out that stereotypes are essential life tools, are accurate much more often than not, and that we do not use them as much as, from cold practical considerations, we should.” Derbyshire grants that stereotypes do not always apply to individuals in a group, citing the examples of “lazy Mexicans” and “unwashed French” as sometimes untrue. However, he writes, stereotypes do not usually exaggerate group tendencies. In fact, he claims, “more often the opposite is true.” The negative stereotypes held by white Americans about African-Americans “are generally accurate,” he claims, “and where they are inaccurate, they always under-estimate a negative characteristic.” His proof: a 1978 survey stating that 21 percent of African-American families are headed by a woman, while another survey found that white Americans estimate that number at between 8 and 12 percent. Stereotypes about racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious groups, he writes, are “useful tools for dealing with the world.” Derbyshire cites the single dissenting voice quoted in the book, the University of Maryland’s Charles Stangor, and implies that Stangor’s criticisms are centered in a desire to reshape society to his own preferences as Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin reshaped Germany and Russia, respectively. “It is highly characteristic of political ideologues,” Derbyshire writes, “that they believe ‘improving the social condition’ can have only one possible meaning—theirs.” Derbyshire concludes that “the Left” “hates humanity and seeks to wage war against human nature,” and only leftists would argue that stereotyping others is wrong. (Derbyshire 2/1/2001) Two weeks later, Derbyshire will “humorously” advocate the murder of Chelsea Clinton, President Clinton’s daughter, in order to eradicate the Clinton bloodline (see February 15, 2001). In late 2003, Derbyshire will describe himself as “a racist, though… a mild and tolerant one” (see November 11-18, 2003).

CIA map showing alleged Iraqi WMD sites.CIA map showing alleged Iraqi WMD sites. [Source: CIA] (click image to enlarge)CIA director George Tenet testifies to Congress that Iraq possesses no weapons of mass destruction and poses no threat to the United State. He says, “We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since [Operation] Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs, although given its past behavior, this type of activity must be regarded as likely.… We assess that since the suspension of [UN] inspections in December of 1998, Baghdad has had the capability to reinitiate both its [chemical and biological weapons] programs… without an inspection monitoring program, however, it is more difficult to determine if Iraq has done so.” He continues, “Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating. Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the US to accurately assess the current state of Iraq’s WMD programs.” Rumsfeld also discusses al-Qaeda, calling it "the most immediate and serious threat" to US interests (see February 7, 2001). (Leopold 6/27/2003)

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says in an interview, "Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the present time." (Leopold 6/27/2003)

The US House Committee on Energy and Commerce holds a hearing on the news networks’ election night decision to project George W. Bush the winner of the Florida election, and thereby the winner of the US presidential election (see November 7-8, 2000). One of the matters at hand is Fox News’s choice to have its election night coverage anchored by John Prescott Ellis, President Bush’s cousin and an intensely partisan Bush supporter (see October-November 2000). The chairman of the committee is W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-LA).
Opening Statements - In his opening statement, Tauzin tells the assemblage that the hearing is to “give us a real sense of what went wrong in terms of the election night coverage of the presidential election of November 2000.” He notes that news coverage issues have been raised in every election since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election. Early calls—the practice of news outlets to “call,” or project, winners in states before elections in other states have closed—have long been acknowledged as having a “deletorious” effect on voting, and the use of “exit polling”—polls of voters taken outside polling booths—have proven both “valuable” and “dangerous.” Voter News Service (VNS), the independent consortium that provided polling and other data to the networks and press agencies for their use during their election coverage, uses exit polling to help those news outlets “project” winners in races. Tauzin spends much of his opening statement attacking VNS and the use of exit polling as the “source” of the election night dissension, and says that on the whole, VNS data “produces statistical biases in favor of Democrats in this case today and against Republicans, that the statistical flaws tend to overstate the Democratic vote in the exit poll and understate the Republican vote.” Tauzin says that investigations have “discovered no evidence of intentional bias, no evidence of intentional slanting of this information,” and instead says the entire problem rests with VNS and its use of exit polling data. In their opening statements, many Republicans echo Tauzin’s remarks. Ranking minority member John Dingell (D-MI) calls the election night coverage “a monumental screw-up which I think has embarrassed an awful lot of people.” Dingell repeats Tauzin’s claim that no evidence of intentional bias has been found—calling such allegations “inflammatory”—and says that the focus of future hearings should be on the issue of voter disenfranchisement. Having said all that, he goes on to say that the networks’ decision to call Florida for Bush in the early hours of November 8, 2000 was premature, and lent itself to later allegations that attempts by Democratic challenger Al Gore were baseless and troublesome. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) accuses the networks of trying to influence Florida voters in the Panhandle, a traditionally Republican stronghold, by prematurely calling the state for Gore eight minutes before polls closed in that region. In questioning, Sherrod Brown (D-OH) notes the almost-immediate appearance of the “Sore Loserman” campaign (derived from the names of the Democratic candidates, Gore and Joe Lieberman), which attempted, successfully, to paint attempts by the Gore campaign to force vote recounts as attempts to “steal” the election.
Focus on Fox - Henry Waxman (D-CA) is the first to mention Fox News. He reads from a Los Angeles Times editorial, quoting: “Suppose that a first cousin of Al Gore had been running one of the network news teams issuing election night projections. Suppose that having previously recused himself from a columnist job saying his objectivity would suffer from family loyalty, this cousin had chatted with Gore six times on Election Day. Suppose the same cousin had been the first to declare Gore as the winner in Florida on election night, helping coax the rival networks to follow suit, leading George W. Bush to call up Gore in order to concede, thereby helping to create that Gore was the duly elected president of the United States long before all the votes had been counted. Can anybody reasonably doubt that the pundits would be working themselves into a nonstop lather charging the liberal media as accessories to grand larceny? Can we imagine, say, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox news channel right-leaning heads dropping the subject?” Waxman says this was absolutely the case, but with Fox News and John Ellis, not Gore and an imaginary Gore cousin at another network. “[O]f everything that happened on election night this was the most important in impact. It created a presumption that George Bush won the election. It set in motion a chain of events that were devastating to Al Gore’s chances and it immeasurably helped George Bush maintain the idea in people’s minds than he was the man who won the election.” Several other Democrats echo Waxman’s statements.
Issues with Florida Election Practices - Peter Deutsch (D-FL) cites issues of rampant voter disenfranchisement of African-Americans, a traditionally Democratic voting bloc, with over 100,000 ballots, mostly from African-American voters, apparently not counted. Deutsch says flatly that “there is no question, it is no longer debatable that if the vote in Florida were counted, Al Gore would be president of the United States.” Bobby Rush (D-IL) cites a large number of incidents where minority group voters were “harassed by police departments” in Florida and in other states besides. In many instances these voters were stopped from voting entirely; in others, their votes were not counted. Other Democrats, such as Eliot Engel (D-NY), echo Deutsch’s and Rush’s concerns; Engel says: “Al Gore was not the only one who lost that night. The American people lost that night, and the news media also lost that night.”
Testimony regarding Independent Review of Election Night Coverage - The first witness is Joan Konner, a professor of journalism at Columbia. Konner led a panel commissioned by CNN “to look at what went wrong in [CNN’s] television coverage of the presidential election 2000.” Her panel submitted a report on the election night coverage to CNN, and CNN provided that report to the committee. “[S]omething went terribly wrong,” she says. “CNN executives, correspondents, and producers themselves describe election night coverage as a debacle, a disaster, and a fiasco; and in our report we agree.” She blames the problems with CNN’s coverage on “excessive speed and hypercompetition, combined with overconfidence in experts and a reliance on increasingly dubious polls. We have stated that the desire to be first or at least not to be consistently behind the others led the networks to make calls unwisely based on sketchy and sometimes mistaken information.” The choice to create, fund, and use VNS by all the networks was primarily a cost-cutting decision, she says, but that choice was a mistake: “Relying on a single source eliminates the checks and balances built into a competitive vote-gathering and vote system. It eliminates the possibility of a second source for validating key and possible conflicting information.” Another member of the panel, James Risser of Stanford University, notes that the report’s findings apply equally to other networks along with CNN.
Media Panel - After much questioning of the CNN panel, a second panel is sworn in. This panel includes: Fox News chairman Roger Ailes; CBS president Andrew Heyward; CNN chairman Tom Johnson; NBC president Andrew Lack; ABC president David Westin; VNS director Ted Savaglio; VNS editorial director Murray Edelman; and the Associated Press’s president, Louis Boccardi. In an opening statement, Savaglio admits that VNS made “errors” in vote tabulation and predictives based on “flaws” in the statistical analyses. Two major errors were made on election night, Savaglio says, the first leading to the incorrect awarding of Florida to Gore early in the evening, and the second provision of data that indicated Bush had a statistically insurmountable lead in Florida that did not include an accurate tabulation of votes cast in Volusia County as well as errors in other county tabulations and estimates. Boccardi says that the Associated Press used VNS-provided data in the erroneous Gore projection, but “takes full responsibility” for the error. The Associated Press did not join in with the second, Fox News-led projection of Bush’s victory. “[T]he race was too close to call” at that point, he says. “It would be right to surmise that the pressure on AP at that moment [to join the networks in calling the election for Bush] was enormous.” Heyward testifies that CBS, like CNN, hired an independent panel to assess its election coverage, and has a number of improvements to be made for future coverage. “Our method of projecting winners, one that, as you have heard, has produced only six bad calls in over 2,000 races since the 1960s, failed us this time; and as a well-known candidate would say, failed us big time in the very state that held the key to this election,” he says. He also notes that charges by Republican committee members that there is an inherent bias in the statistical models against Republicans “has been rejected by every single outside expert who examined each of the networks, even those experts, and you heard from them today, who are the most highly critical of us.” Lack asks why there was not more media coverage and examination of other voting-related problems, from “ineffective voting machines” and “confusing ballots” to allowing felons to vote.
Ailes's Statement - Ailes blames VNS for Fox’s “mistakes” in its reporting, saying: “As everyone knows, Voter News Service, a consortium with a good track record, gave out bad numbers that night. In the closest race in history the wheels apparently came off a rattle trap computer system which we relied on and paid millions for.” He claims, “Through our self-examination and investigation we have determined that there was no intentional political favoritism in play on election night on the part of Fox News.” Ailes does not mention his choice to use Ellis as Fox’s election night anchor in his verbal statement, but in a written statement he submits to the committee, he says that Ellis was not the person who made the final decision to declare Florida for Bush. The news division’s vice president, John Moody, made the final call. As for hiring Ellis, he praises Ellis’s professionalism and experience, and writes: “We at Fox News do not discriminate against people because of their family connections. I am more than happy to give you examples of offspring of famous politicians who are employed at Fox News.” He also says that he was aware that Ellis was speaking to both George W. and Jeb Bush throughout the night, and writes: “Obviously, through his family connections, Mr. Ellis has very good sources. I do not see this as a fault or shortcoming of Mr. Ellis. Quite the contrary, I see this as a good journalist talking to his very high level sources on election night.” Though Ellis has freely admitted to sharing VNS data with both Bushes, Ailes writes, “Our investigation of election night 2000 found not one shred of evidence that Mr. Ellis revealed information to either or both of the Bush brothers which he should not have, or that he acted improperly or broke any rules or policies of either Fox News or VNS.” He concludes: “[I]n my heart I do believe that democracy was harmed by my network and others on November 7, 2000. I do believe that the great profession of journalism took many steps backward.”
Questioning the Media Representatives - Almost immediately, Ailes raises the question of skewed exit polling that appears to favor Democrats, though experts have refuted these claims in just-given testimony, and Savaglio has just said that exit polls exhibit no such bias. Ailes tells the panel: “I do know that when Republicans come out of polls and you ask them a question they tend to think it’s none of your business and Democrats want to share their feelings. So you may get some bias there that is inadvertent, just because it’s a cultural thing and unless you send the Republicans to sensitivity training you’re not going to get them to do that.” Tauzin says that a study of VNS results tends to bear out Ailes’s claim. Westin says if there is bias in exit polling, it cuts both ways, an observation with which Tauzin also agrees. Savaglio admits that after midnight, VNS provided substantially inaccurate information to the networks that led them to conclude Bush had a slight but insurmountable lead in Florida. Lack denies the rumor that Jack Welch, the CEO of NBC’s parent company General Electric, made the decision for NBC News to follow Fox’s lead in declaring Bush the presumptive winner in Florida. Waxman accepts Lack’s denial, but notes that he has been told Welch’s command to declare Bush the winner is preserved on videotape, “filmed by NBC’s advertising and promotions department.” Lack says if the tape exists, he will provide it to the committee. Bart Stupak (D-MI) asks the representatives directly if they believe any bias towards one party or another exists in their networks’ coverage, and all answer strongly in the negative. Heyward says that rumors of networks such as his trying to “slant” their coverage to give the idea of an “inevitable” Gore victory are entirely negative, and says: “[C]ertainly we displayed the popular vote graphic 15 times between 7 and 11. President Bush was ahead every single time; on the electoral count, 75 out of 100 times.… The video [shown by the commission at the beginning of the hearing] that gave the impression that the networks were saying Gore’s got it in the bag I believe was misleading, yes.” Westin agrees with Heyward, and says the networks generally gave the impression of “a much more balanced, much closer race throughout the night.” Under questioning by Gene Green (D-TX), Ailes contradicts previously presented evidence and says no one at the election desk, Ellis or anyone else, was in contact with “Austin” (meaning the Bush campaign and George W. Bush personally) at all that night. (House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce 2/14/2001)

John Derbyshire.John Derbyshire. [Source: John Derbyshire]National Review columnist John Derbyshire “satirically” advocates the murder of Chelsea Clinton, the only daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, in order to stamp out the Clinton bloodline once and for all. Former President Clinton has left the White House, to spend the rest of his life “goosing waitresses [and] defending himself in court.” Hillary “has no future beyond the US Senate… [she is] maxed out.” But, he warns, “Clintonism may yet rise again.… On February 27th, Chelsea Clinton will turn 21.”
'I Hate Chelsea Clinton' - Derbyshire confesses: “I hate Chelsea Clinton. I admit it’s not easy to justify my loathing of this person. I can pick out causes, but none of them is one hundred per cent rational.… I admit, I hate Chelsea because she is a Clinton.” After noting the negative reactions to his previous attack on the younger Clinton’s physical appearance, he acknowledges that she hasn’t committed the “array of crimes” her father is allegedly responsible for, but “she doesn’t deserve any credit for not having done these things; she just hasn’t had time yet.” He writes that since she was 18, she has “sign[ed] on to the Great Clinton Project. Which is, has always been, and forever will be, to enrich the family from the public fisc, and to lie, bomb, bribe, and intimidate your way out of trouble when necessary.”
'Sippenhaft' - Derbyshire notes that in totalitarian societies of the past, many people were executed merely because of their family connections, and says the same should be considered for Chelsea Clinton. “Chelsea is a Clinton,” he writes. “She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past—I’m not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble—recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin’s penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an ‘enemy of the people.’ The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, ‘clan liability.’ In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished ‘to the ninth degree’: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.… We don’t, of course, institutionalize such principles in our society, and a good thing too. Our humanity and forbearance, however, has a cost. The cost is that the vile genetic inheritance of Bill and Hillary Clinton may live on to plague us in the future. It isn’t over, folks.” (Derbyshire 2/15/2001)
'Hysterical Idiots' - After a week of angry criticism, Derbyshire will write a column defending his original column as “satire,” blaming “liberals” for “missing the joke,” and admitting his column “wasn’t meant to be a thigh-slapper. I had a point to make: There could be another Clinton in our future, and on present evidence (admittedly rather scant), it would be a chip off the old block. That’s fair comment. However, my tone was partly tongue in cheek.… Humor and irony are especially tricky.” He asks, rhetorically, if he intends to apologize, and answers himself: “In your dreams. I make it a point of principle never to apologize to hysterical idiots.” (Derbyshire 2/22/2001)

Airman Flight School.Airman Flight School. [Source: FBI]Al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui flies to the US. Three days later, he starts flight training at the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma. (Other Islamic extremists had previously trained at the same flight school or other schools in the area (see September 1999)). He trains there until May, but does not do well and drops out before getting a pilot’s license. His visa expires on May 22, but he does not attempt to renew it or get another one. He stays in Norman, arranging to change flight schools, and frequently exercising in a gym. (MSNBC 12/11/2001; US Congress 10/17/2002) According to US investigators, would-be hijacker Ramzi Bin al-Shibh later says he meets Moussaoui in Karachi, Pakistan, in June 2001 (see June 2001). (Schmidt 11/20/2002)

The Daily Californian, the newspaper for the University of California at Berkeley, runs a full-page ad from conservative pundit David Horowitz calling the idea of “reparations” for the African-American descendants of slaves “racist.” Horowitz, a UC-Berkeley graduate, had attempted to persuade a number of college newspapers to run the ad on February 28, the last day of Black History Month. The ad, entitled “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea—and Racist, Too,” says that reparations to African-Americans “have already been paid,” and asks, “What about the debt blacks owe to America?” The ad claims that blacks are themselves responsible for slavery and should accept this “fact.” The day after publishing the ad, the Daily Californian, responding to a harsh public outcry, apologizes for running the advertisement and writes that it allowed itself to “become an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry.” The UC-Davis newspaper also runs the ad, and also issues an apology. Many other California and Ivy League universities also receive the ad, but refuse to run it. (Daily Californian 3/2/2001; Media Matters 12/1/2004) Robert Chrisman, editor in chief of the journal Black Scholar, and Ernest Allen Jr., a professor of African-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, respond to Horowitz’s ad in an essay published by the university’s African-American Studies department. They write in part: “While Horowitz’s article pretends to address the issues of reparations, it is not about reparations at all. It is, rather, a well-heeled, coordinated attack on black Americans, which is calculated to elicit division and strife.… As one examines the text of Horowitz’s article, it becomes apparent that it is not a reasoned essay addressed to the topic of reparations: it is, rather, a racist polemic against African-Americans and Africans that is neither responsible nor informed, relying heavily upon sophistry and a Hitlerian ‘Big Lie’ technique.” (Chrisman and Allen 3/1/2001) Horowitz publishes the ad on his Web publication Front Page Magazine, but will later delete it. It will be chronicled in a 2004 article by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters. (Media Matters 12/1/2004)

US Attorney Alejandro N. Mayorkas, who serves the Southern District of California, announces he is stepping down as of April 20. Mayorkas is one of the small number of US Attorneys allowed to keep his position for any length of time after President Bush took office in January (see January 2001). Mayorkas, a Democrat, was appointed during the Clinton administration. He says he is responsible for President Clinton issuing the controversial pardon of convicted cocaine dealer Carlos Vignali Jr.; Mayorkas says he asked the White House to consider the pardon because of his compassion for Vignali’s family. Mayorkas has been US Attorney for something over two years, and supervises the largest US Attorney’s office in the nation. He emphasized the prosecution of hate crimes, environmental crimes, and consumer fraud during his tenure, and won plaudits for his successful prosecution of spree killer Buford Furrow, a white supremacist who killed a Filipino-American and shot four people at a Jewish community center (see August 10, 1999). The Justice Department says there is an extra issue with naming Mayorkas’s replacement. Traditionally, the home-state senators make a list of potential nominees for the president to choose from, but both senators from California are Democrats, as is the governor. Congressional Republicans may be asked to come up with a list. Attorney General John Ashcroft will name an interim prosecutor, or prosecutors, to serve in Mayorkas’s stead for up to 120 days. If no one is confirmed in that time, the US District Court has the authority to name a replacement. (Rosenzweig and Lichtblau 3/16/2001) Former judge Carol Lam will be named as Mayorkas’s replacement (see November 8, 2002). Mayorkas will eventually become the head of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services 8/24/2012)

Jayna Davis, appearing on a Fox News broadcast.Jayna Davis, appearing on a Fox News broadcast. [Source: Libertarian Republican (.com)]Former investigative reporter Jayna Davis, who once worked for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, tells Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly she has amassed evidence that she says proves Osama bin Laden was behind the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Former Army soldier Timothy McVeigh is awaiting execution for carrying out the bombing (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997). Davis says that she attempted to give her evidence, comprised of court records, 24 witness statements, and reports from law enforcement, intelligence, and terror experts, to the FBI, which she says refused to accept the material. Davis says the FBI is involved in an elaborate conspiracy to conceal the existence of a Middle Eastern terror cell that carried out the bombing; law enforcement authorities have long dismissed the idea (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After) that the bombing was carried out by anyone other than McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998). According to Davis’s version of events, a Middle Eastern terror cell was operating only blocks away from the Murrah Federal Building, the site of the bombing, and an Iraqi national who formerly served in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard was in contact with McVeigh on the day of the bombing. It was the Iraqi, not McVeigh, she says, who drove the Ryder truck containing the bomb to the federal building; he fled in a brown Chevrolet pickup truck. Davis says in the minutes after the bombing, an all-points bulletin was issued for the Iraqi, but it was inexplicably withdrawn shortly thereafter. Davis says the conspiracy consists of McVeigh, Nichols, and at least seven Middle Eastern men, with bin Laden masterminding the operation. “The evidence we have gathered definitely implicates McVeigh and Nichols,” she says. “I want to make that very clear. They were in it up to their eyeballs.” Of the FBI’s refusal to consider her evidence, she tells O’Reilly: “I was flabbergasted. I am unable to imagine any reason they would not accept it.” (WorldNetDaily 3/21/2001)

Stephen Jones, who represented convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997), says in an op-ed for the Daily Oklahoman he is willing to testify under oath that McVeigh did not act alone in the bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). During McVeigh’s trial, Jones insisted that there was evidence of a larger conspiracy, perhaps involving domestic far-right militia groups and perhaps Islamist radicals. Jones says he is willing to testify on behalf of Terry Nichols, McVeigh’s accomplice (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998), who is facing 160 counts of murder in an Oklahoma state court (see September 5, 2001). Jones refuses to say whether either McVeigh or Nichols were actually involved in the conspiracy, stating: “At this point, it’s not appropriate for me to name names or to go into detail in the media. There are pending proceedings.” However, he tells a reporter for The Oklahoman, “If McVeigh is saying he acted alone, that is inconsistent with what he told me.” Any such claim of sole responsibility, Jones says, would be inconsistent with his understanding of the case “and certainly contrary to many statements Tim McVeigh made to me while I was his attorney.” Such a claim, he says, “would be nothing more than an effort to obstruct justice in pending judicial proceedings.… If I remain silent, my silence could be taken… as condoning what he has said and I can’t do that.” Jones says his possible testimony would not violate attorney-client privilege, as he no longer represents McVeigh; moreover, Jones says, McVeigh gave up attorney-client privilege when he attacked Jones in a lawsuit last year (see August 14-27, 1997). (Reuters 3/26/2001)

Esquire Magazine publishes a number of letters written by convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) to Phil Bacharach, a former reporter for the Oklahoma Gazette. Most of the material in the letters is trivial, with McVeigh joking about his favorite television shows and complaining about conditions in his cell, but at least one letter touches on his anger about the children who died in the Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). Nowhere in the letters does he discuss the bombing that killed 168 people, including 19 children. Bacharach, who now works as press secretary for Governor Frank Keating (R-OK), corresponded with McVeigh for two years before joining Keating’s staff, when the letter exchanges were terminated. Bacharach says that anyone looking for answers regarding the bombing will not find them in the letters. “It is beyond me to reconcile the Timothy McVeigh who murdered 168 people with the writer of these letters,” he writes. “True, this correspondence offers only a small window through which to look. I do know one thing: In the written word, at least, he has not a whisper of conscience.” The letters were written while McVeigh was incarcerated at a “supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colorado; he now awaits execution in a federal prison in Indiana. According to the letters, McVeigh is fond of The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Star Trek, and was not happy when he was moved from the cell he kept spotlessly clean to a cell “brutally thrashed by a pig inmate,” a leader of the Latin Kings street gang. He mocks Oklahoma County District Attorney Bob Macy, who had promised to try McVeigh on 160 state counts of murder, calling him “Bozo” and “a punk.” He calls the FBI “wizards at propaganda” who manipulated the facts of the Branch Davidian tragedy. A letter from November 26, 1996 sheds some light on McVeigh’s feelings about the Davidian tragedy, and may help explain his rationale for the bombing. In that letter, he wrote: “The public never saw the Davidians’ home video of their cute babies, adorable children, loving mothers, or protective fathers. Nor did they see pictures of the charred remains of children’s bodies. Therefore, they didn’t care when these families died a slow, tortuous death at the hands of the FBI.” Bacharach says it was an unwritten rule between them that they not discuss the bombing. Bacharach says in the letter exchange, he hoped to understand “what made a person who didn’t seem like evil-incarnate commit that evil act.” That never happened, he writes. “It is this fact—that he was not dead behind the eyes, a sheer lunatic—that troubles me the most. He didn’t have the right to be normal, glib, and pleasant, I thought. He owed the dead of Oklahoma City the decency of at least showing his evil.” (Brown 3/27/2001)

FBI agent Danny Defenbaugh, the lead investigator in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing case (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After 9:02 a.m., April 19, 1995), tells a CNN reporter that convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) was planning subsequent attacks to follow the first bombing. He also says that there was no way McVeigh could not have known that his target, the Murrah Federal Building, had children inside. “There were other federal buildings that were mentioned,” Defenbaugh says, referring to potential targets in Dallas and Omaha. The FBI, after finding some of the storage units McVeigh and his co-conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) used to store explosives, conducted an intensive search for other stores of explosives. “We sent out within two weeks of that letters to every storage facility in the United States,” he says, but notes that nothing turned up. “It was, and still is, probably the largest, most labor-intensive investigation ever conducted by the FBI.” As for the children being in the building, Defenbaugh says, “No matter what and how you go by that building, if you look at the building, you’re going to see all the little cut-out hands, all the little apples and flowers showing that there’s a kindergarten there—that there are children in that building.” Defenbaugh says the most frequent question he hears is whether others were involved in the conspiracy, usually referring to the now-infamous “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995). Defenbaugh says that security camera footage from a McDonald’s (see 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. April 17, 1995) indicates that McVeigh carried out the bombing by himself. “There was no one else who came in [to the restaurant] with him, who was involved with him, who sat with him, who talked with him, who left with him, no indication whatsoever that there was anyone else,” he says. Defenbaugh notes that McVeigh is a pariah, even to anti-government militia groups, saying: “He’s not a martyr. He’s a cold-blooded killer.” (CNN 3/28/2001)

French authorities arrest anti-abortion advocate James Kopp, who is wanted for the 1998 murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian (see October 23, 1998). The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have been hunting for Kopp since the murder, and tracked him through a Brooklyn couple, Dennis Malvasi and his wife Loretta Marra, who are arrested for conspiring to aid and abet Slepian’s murder. (Malvasi has been convicted of bombing an abortion clinic; Marra and Kopp have been arrested together at a number of anti-abortion protests.) Shortly after Slepian’s murder, the FBI found Kopp’s sniper rifle buried behind Slepian’s home; investigators also found Kopp’s automobile in a suburb of Slepian’s home town of Amherst. Currently Kopp is being held in Rennes, where he is refusing to answer questions; French authorities have not yet decided whether to extradite him, as French law precludes extradition of anyone who may face the death penalty. In March, the FBI learned that Kopp was living in Ireland under a series of false identities and surviving by doing menial labor. In mid-March, Kopp fled Ireland on a ferry that took him to Brittany, a rural French province. It is there that he is arrested, in the medieval Breton town of Dinan. Kopp is also wanted for three non-fatal shooting ambushes of doctors in Canada and in Rochester, New York. (Vulliamy, McDonald, and Jeff 4/1/2001; National Abortion Federation 2010)
Help from Irish Anti-Abortion Groups - Irish pro-life groups deny helping Kopp, but an FBI spokesman says, “He did not leave the US without assistance, and he did not remain a fugitive without assistance.” Later evidence will show that Kopp was assisted by American and Irish anti-abortion advocates in Ireland, many of whom are affiliated with the right-wing breakaway Catholic sect headed by excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. In 2001, The Nation will observe, “In the last half-decade US antiabortion campaigners have moved on Ireland in a big way, introducing a militancy previously unknown there.” (Nation 4/23/2001; National Abortion Federation 2010)
Pro-Choice Spokesman: Kopp Part of a Larger Conspiracy - National Abortion Federation head Vicki Saporta says in a statement: “The arrest of James Kopp could potentially be the greatest advance in the effort to end violence against abortion providers in this country and in Canada. Law enforcement officials are now uncovering what we have been asserting for years: the existence of an organized network of anti-choice extremists who assist terrorists in carrying out acts of violence against abortion providers.… The Army of God (see 1982) has in large part been responsible for the reign of terror against abortion providers in the last decade. This is the best opportunity we’ve had to finally identify, expose, and prosecute those individuals who are part of this extreme network.… We have been collecting statistics on violence against abortion providers for more than 20 years, and we know that there are individuals who provide money, safe houses, and other support to those who have committed acts of terrorism against abortion providers. These terrorists do not work alone, and we now have an important opportunity to reduce the violence and harassment that abortion providers in this country face on a daily basis.… Now is the time to uncover the ring of extremists who are part of the Army of God and reduce the violence against abortion providers once and for all.” (National Abortion Federation 3/30/2001)
Confession and Conviction - Kopp will be extradited over a year later (see June 5, 2002 and After). He will confess to the murder shortly afterward (see November 21, 2002) and will be pronounced guilty in 2003 (see March 17-18, 2003).

DVD cover illustration of the film ‘Soldiers in the Army of God.’DVD cover illustration of the film ‘Soldiers in the Army of God.’ [Source: HBO / St. Pete for Peace]Cable movie provider HBO airs a documentary, Soldiers in the Army of God, focusing on the violent anti-abortion movement (see 1982, Early 1980s, August 1982, and July 1988) and three of its leaders. National Public Radio airs a profile of the documentary, featuring an interview with the film’s producers, Marc Levin, Daphne Pinkerson, and Daniel Voll. According to Voll, the film focuses on three members of the “Army of God”: young recruit Jonathan O’Toole, who says he was looking for the most “radical” and “terroristic” anti-abortion group he could find; Neal Horsley, who runs an anti-abortion Web site; and long-haul trucker Bob Lokey, who recruits new members.
'Violent Fringe' of Anti-Abortion Opposition - Voll describes the three as part of the “violent fringe” of anti-abortion opposition: “These are the guys on the ground who are—whatever the words that politicians and other leaders of these cultural wars can put out there, these are the men who hear them and feel emboldened by them, who feel encouraged by each other, and they are every day praying for God’s will in their life.” Another unidentified man says: “Anybody who raises a weapon up against these people who are slaughtering these babies, before God and the entire world, right now I say you are doing God’s own work. And may the power of God be with you as you aim that rifle. You’re squeezing that trigger for Almighty God.” In the documentary, an unidentified anti-abortion activist says: “There are people in this world right now who are looking for directions on what do we do. Well, we end abortion on demand by the most direct means available to us. So stop the abortion with a bullet, if that’s what it takes. Stop it with a bomb, if that’ s what it takes. You stop abortion on demand. Don’t let it go any farther.” O’Toole says that the “next step is to arm ourselves in a militia, a real militia that has the power to resist the federal government.” Pinkerson says that O’Toole, who was 19 when he joined the Army of God, found Horsley on the Internet through Horsley’s Web site, “The Nuremberg Files,” which lists doctors who perform abortions (see January 1997). O’Toole became Horsley’s assistant, and through him met Lokey, who runs a Web site called “Save the Babies.” In the film, O’Toole, whom the producers speculate may eventually become an assassin of abortion providers, says that because of America’s legalization of abortion, the country has become like “Nazi Germany. It’s like you’ve got concentration camps around you.” Levin notes that filmed conversations between Horsley and Lokey show that many in the movement feel threatened by the concept of women’s equality, and blame men’s failure to exert “dominion” over women as part of the reason why the US legalized abortion. (Montagne 3/30/2001; Clarkson 3/30/2001)
Opposition to Homosexuality - Horsley draws a connection between the organization’s opposition to abortion and the American citizenry’s supposed opposition to homosexuality, saying: “If the American people woke up, and realized that they had to choose between legalized abortion, legalized homosexuality, and legalized all the rest of the desecration or civil war which would cause the rivers to run red with blood—hey, you know we will see legalized abortion go like that! We’ll see legalized homosexuality go like that! Because the American people are not willing to die for homosexuals.”
Bringing Bomb-Making Materials to Washington - The film also shows Lokey bragging to convicted clinic bomber Michael Bray (see September 1994) that he has just trucked 45,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a substance that can be used to make “fertilizer bombs” similar to the one that destroyed an Oklahoma City federal building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), into Washington, DC.
Anti-Abortion Opposition Part of an 'Apocalyptic' Death Struggle - Author and reporter Frederick Clarkson writes: “At once shocking, compelling, and beautifully made, the film is essentially the national television debut for the aboveground spokesmen and spokeswomen of the Army of God.… Horsley and others are quite clear in their public statements and their writings that the attacks on clinics and the murders of doctors are but warning shots in what they envision as an epochal, even an apocalyptic struggle at hand. Either Americans conform to their view of God’s laws, or there will be a blood bath, they say. And there is no evidence that they are anything but dead serious.” (Clarkson 3/30/2001)

Randy Weaver, the white separatist who was at the heart of the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff with the FBI (see August 31, 1992), says the reasons given by convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) for the bombing ring hollow. A book titled American Terrorist, based on prison interviews given by McVeigh to two reporters, claims that McVeigh targeted a federal building in retaliation for the Ruby Ridge (see August 21-31, 1992) and Branch Davidian (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) tragedies (see March 29, 2001). Weaver is not buying it. “McVeigh took the law into his own hands,” he tells a reporter. “He had justified it in his own mind. I don’t agree with him at all. He has more anger in him than I do, and I don’t know how that could be.” Weaver’s wife and son died by FBI gunfire during the siege. A federal marshal was also killed in the standoff. (Associated Press 3/31/2001)

Al- Qaeda leader Hambali.Al- Qaeda leader Hambali. [Source: Virtual Information Center]In April 2001, the Malaysian government connects al-Qaeda leader Hambali with a gun-smuggling syndicate, and as a result police place an all points bulletin for him. A month later, Hambali is connected to a botched bank robbery also in Malaysia. Twenty-six members of the Malaysian militant group Kumpulan Militan Malaysia (KMM) are arrested and questioned about the robbery. Authorities discover the group has been responsible for a number of attacks, including the bombing of a Hindu temple, and that Hambali is a top leader. (Pereira 2/10/2002; New Straits Times 8/16/2003) A photograph of Hambali is found in a raid at this time, and is matched with a photo of him discovered in 1995 on Ramzi Yousef’s computer that contained files detailing the Bojinka plot (see January 6, 1995). (Pereira 2/2/2002) His picture appears in the media no later than mid-August. (Emmanuel 8/18/2001; Ahmad 9/9/2001) The US is already aware of Hambali’s involvement in the Bojinka plot (see May 23, 1999). However, this new evidence of Hambali’s importance does not lead to any renewed focus on the January 2000 al-Qaeda summit attended by Hambali and two of the 9/11 hijackers that was monitored by Malaysian intelligence (see January 5-8, 2000).

Anti-government groups believe that convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) was a brainwashed “patsy” who undermined them, and is not a martyr to their cause, according to experts who monitor the groups. McVeigh is awaiting execution at an Indiana prison. Mark Pitcavage, who tracks right-wing hate groups for the Anti-Defamation League, says: “They view Timothy McVeigh as a patsy, as a sort of Lee Harvey Oswald type. Why hasn’t he come clean? Because he’s been brainwashed, [the groups believe,] and the government wants to execute him before he can wake up.” The Oswald comparison refers to the belief that some have that Oswald was an innocent man framed for the killing of President John F. Kennedy. Some anti-government extremists say that McVeigh was programmed by government agents to cause dissension among anti-government groups, and to give the government an excuse to crack down on the groups. Even so, some experts warn, some anti-government and militia groups will choose April 19, the date of the bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), as a day to recognize and to possibly carry out further violence. Political scientist Evan McKenzie says, “Every April 19, everyone should hold their breath.” (Stern 4/5/2001)

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and June 2, 1997), waiting for his execution (see January 16, 2001), meets with his father Bill McVeigh for the last time. He again refuses to apologize for the bombing: “Dad, if I did, I wouldn’t be telling the truth,” he says. (The Oklahoman 4/2009)

US officials in the Department of Energy (DOE) respond to an intelligence report released the previous day (see April 10, 2001) which contended that the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq (see July 2001) are destined for use as centrifuge rotors in a uranium enrichment program. The Energy Department argues that the tubes are too narrow, too heavy, and too long to be used in a gas centrifuge. Furthermore, “the tubes’ specifications suggest a centrifuge design quite different from any Iraq is known to have.” The officials also note that there is no evidence that Iraq is seeking to acquire other materials that would be needed to construct a centrifuge. And if the Iraqis intend to use the tubes for uranium enrichment, the officials ask, why are they making no effort to conceal their interest in acquiring the tubes? “[T]he manner in which the procurement is being handled (multiple procurement agents, quotes obtained from multiple suppliers in diverse locations, and price haggling) seems to better match our expectations for a conventional Iraqi military buy than a major purchase for a clandestine weapons-of-mass destruction program,” the report notes. (US Congress 7/7/2004; Barstow, Broad, and Gerth 10/3/2004) The DOE therefore concludes that “while the gas centrifuge application cannot be ruled out, we assess that the procurement activity more likely supports a different application, such as conventional ordnance production.” The agency considers it more plausible that the tubes are meant to serve as rocket casings. Notwithstanding, the DOE concedes that it has “not identified an Iraq-specific, military, or other noncentrifuge application that precisely matches the tube specifications.” (US Congress 7/7/2004) The DOE will identify a possible specific conventional military application for the tubes the following month (see May 9, 2001).

Attorney General John Ashcroft announces that survivors and relatives of victims of the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and June 2, 1997) will be allowed to witness Timothy McVeigh’s execution via closed-circuit television. (Fox News 4/13/2005)

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997), whose execution is rapidly approaching (see January 16, 2001), politely declines a request by the animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that he make his last meal a vegetarian one. In a handwritten letter responding to PETA’s request, McVeigh writes that he sympathizes with the group’s cause, but will not make that request. PETA issued the request through the prison warden, stating that McVeigh’s last meal should have no meat because “Mr. McVeigh should not be allowed to take even one more life.” The warden refused, and PETA sent the request directly to McVeigh. “Truth is, I understand your cause—I’ve seen slaughter houses myself—but I still believe in reasonable taking and eating of game (as an outdoorsman and hunter),” he writes. “My one main problem with the ‘veg’ movement is this (besides the fact I’m a libertarian): Where do you draw the line and what standard is used to define that line?” McVeigh questions whether “grubs/worms/etc.” suffer. He also argues that “plants are alive, too. They react to stimuli (including pain); have circulatory systems, etc.… To me, the answer is as the Indians believed: respect for the life you take to sustain yourself, but come to terms with your place in the ‘food chain.’” He congratulates the organization on the media attention it has garnered as a result of the request, writing: “You should have seen the local editorial response to your letter. You gotta remember, this is meat-eatin’ farm country; still, good job getting the attention to your cause (like protesting dead rats on [the popular television reality show] ‘Survivor’).” McVeigh closes by saying he cannot “sustain a prolonged intellectual debate on the subject, as my time is short” but suggests the organization should contact his friend Ted Kaczynski (see April 3, 1996), an inmate of the Florence, Colorado, “supermax” prison that until recently housed McVeigh, whom McVeigh says would be more likely to take up the vegetarian issue. (Mayhem (.net) 4/2009)

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) says that he bombed the Murrah Federal Building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) after considering a plan to assassinate Attorney General Janet Reno. McVeigh’s statement comes in a written response he gives to questions submitted by Fox News reporter Rita Cosby. McVeigh calls the bombing both a retaliatory strike and a pre-emptive one against an “increasingly militaristic and violent federal government.” Last month, McVeigh’s admission of his role in the bombing was made public by two reporters, in which he called the deaths of children in the blast “collateral damage” (see March 29, 2001). McVeigh provides the answers to the Fox reporters’ questions to make sure his motives for setting the bomb are clear. “I explain this not for publicity,” he writes. “I explain so that the record is clear as to my thinking and motivations in bombing a government installation.” He notes again that the date of April 19 was chosen to reflect the date of the Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After), calling the government’s assault on the Davidian compound the equivalent of the Chinese government’s “deploying tanks against its own citizens.” McVeigh says he waited two years for the government to correct its “abuse of power,” and became angry when “they actually gave awards and bonus pay to those agents involved, and conversely, jailed the survivors of the Waco inferno after the jury wanted them set free” (see January-February 1994). McVeigh says he observed what he calls “multiple and ever-more aggressive raids across the country” by the government that constituted what he calls an unacceptable pattern of behavior. He says violent action against the government became an option for him only after protest marches, letter-writing campaigns, and media awareness “failed to correct the abuse.” His first thought was “a campaign of assassination,” including Reno, Judge Walter Smith, who handled the Branch Davidian trial, and Lon Horiuchi, the FBI agent who shot to death the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver during the Ruby Ridge siege (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992). Assassinating Reno, McVeigh says, would “mak[e] her accept ‘full responsibility’ in deed, not just word,” for the Davidian disaster. But, he says, federal agents are merely soldiers, and he decided to strike against them at what he calls one of their command centers. The bombing, he says, was “morally and strategically equivalent to the US hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations,” and therefore was acceptable for that reason. “I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government,” he writes. “Based on the observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option.” Asked about calling the children slain in the blast “collateral damage,” McVeigh writes: “Collateral Damage? As an American news junkie; a military man; and a Gulf War Veteran, where do they think I learned that (It sure as hell wasn’t Osami [sic] Bin Laden!)” (Fox News 4/26/2001; Gullo 4/27/2001; Saulny 4/27/2001; Fox News 4/27/2001)

David Schippers, the House Judiciary Committee’s chief investigator in the Clinton impeachment trial, was hired to represent FBI agent Robert Wright in September 1999 (see August 3, 1999). After 9/11, Schippers will claim that he began privately informing congresspeople about Wright’s investigation into terrorism financing in the US in early 2001, but found little interest (see February-March 2001). Schippers appears to have had different sources than Wright who began telling him about attack warnings. Supposedly, the first warning was based on a secret February 1995 report which stated that bin Laden was planning three attacks on the US: the bombing of a federal building in the heartland of the US, shooting down or blowing up an airplane, and a massive attack in lower Manhattan. Schippers believes the first warning was a prediction of the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) and the second was a prediction of the 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800 (see July 17, 1996-September 1996). In some versions of this warning, the Manhattan attack was meant to be caused by a “dirty bomb” - explosives mixed with radioactive materials - but other accounts described the use of planes as weapons instead. He says one of his sources for this early warning was Yossef Bodansky, director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. Schippers will claim that his sources continued to uncover further information. The Manhattan warning “had started out just a general threat, but they narrowed it and narrowed it, more and more with time,” until the “same people who came out with the first warning” tell him in May 2001 that “an attack on lower Manhattan is imminent.” Schippers speaks to several FBI agents directly, and hears that “there are [other agents] all over the country who are frustrated and just waiting to come out.” They are frustrated by “a bureaucratic elite in Washington short-stopping information,” which gives “terrorism a free reign in the United States.” Schippers later claims that some FBI agents later told him that before 9/11, “they had [Mohamed] Atta in their sights.” They also had attempted to “check out” the names and activities of “very strange characters training at flight schools.” He will claim that “FBI agents in Chicago and Minnesota” tell him “there [is] going to be an attack on lower Manhattan.” Schippers will later claim that he will attempt to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft and other politicians about this warning in coming months, but that they will show little interest (see July-Late August 2001). (Metcalf 10/21/2001; Patterson 5/18/2002; Ahmed 2004, pp. 258-260)

An investigative report commissioned by Charles Key (R-OK), a former Oklahoma legislator with ties to regional militia organizations, will conclude that the government’s investigation into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was riddled with omissions and errors. Key informs WorldNetDaily (WND), a conservative news Web site, of the upcoming report’s conclusions. Key helped convene a grand jury investigation in 1998 to look into questions surrounding the bombing; when the jury found no evidence of a larger conspiracy, as Key had hoped it would (see December 30, 1998), he denounced the jury’s findings and created the Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee, an independent body that conducted the investigation and wrote the report. Key says he hopes the report will help Americans finally “get to the truth” behind the bombing conspiracy. “The purpose of our report is to document the truth,” Key tells WND. “We, as so many others do, believe that facts regarding other perpetrators, prior knowledge, and the number of explosive devices used to damage the Murrah Building has been concealed.” Key says the committee found “substantial evidence” proving that federal law enforcement officials and court officials knew of the attack well beforehand, but either ignored those warnings or deliberately allowed the attack to go forward. One of those warnings came from a government informant, Carole Howe, whose credibility was questioned by her handlers at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF—see August 1994 - March 1995). Other warnings came from two informants affiliated with organizations in foreign countries, Key says. Four government agencies, including the BATF and the US Marshals, received a notification “to be on the alert for possible attacks against individuals, federal institutions, or the public at large.” Key also says that Federal Judge Wayne Alley, who originally handled the case against convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997), told a reporter that the day of the bombing he had been warned to be on the alert for a possible bombing. Key also says he has statements from five witnesses who claim that no BATF agents were in the building at the time of the attack (this is false; a BATF agent documented his experiences in trying to escape from the building; see 9:02 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995). Other witnesses have told Key that they saw bomb squad vehicles in downtown Oklahoma City before the bomb went off. Key says “over 70 witnesses” saw McVeigh “and one or more John Does” in the days before, and on the day of, the bombing. After the bombing, Key says, around 40 witnesses identified the now-infamous “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995) as a man of Middle Eastern descent (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After). Federal authorities ignored those witnesses, Key claims. Key also says that several witnesses in the building told of a “second bomb” going off before (not after) McVeigh’s truck bomb exploded. (Claims that a second bomb went off after the truck bomb detonated have been disputed—see After 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and 9:22 a.m. April 19, 1995). Some of the witnesses say that the first, smaller detonation drove them to hide under their desks just before the larger bomb detonated, thus giving them the chance to save themselves. Key says the committee obtained seismological evidence from what he calls an expert source that, he says, “supports the fact that there were multiple explosions” that morning. But, as was the case with other witnesses, the expert “was not allowed to testify at the federal trials,” the report says. And, Key says, witnesses claim to have actually seen a number of bombs in the building that morning, reports that caused rescue personnel to evacuate the building while people were still trapped inside (see 10:00 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995 and 10:28 a.m. April 19, 1995). The report questions the size of McVeigh’s bomb, which was estimated at a number of different sizes but was eventually concluded by government experts to be somewhere around 4,800 pounds; the report says that estimate is incorrect. The damage suffered by the Murrah Building could not have been caused by a bomb of that size, according to “experts” quoted by the report. Key also says that the government deliberately prevented evidence of others’ involvement in the bombing to be used in McVeigh’s and Nichols’s trials, and says that indictments against the two named those persons (this is false—see August 10, 1995). Key says allegations by Jayna Davis that Osama bin Laden masterminded the bomb conspiracy (see March 20, 2001) support the report’s contentions. The report contains other allegations, including possible involvement by federal law enforcement and court officials, FBI officials refusing to allow Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) personnel to investigate the building, FBI officials refusing to run fingerprint checks of over 1,000 prints obtained in the investigation, what the report calls “blatant bias” exhibited towards “anyone asking questions or probing into facts,” and of breaking “[v]irtually all of the rules governing grand juries.” Key’s committee concludes that the Clinton administration “had prior knowledge of the bombing,” and that “McVeigh and Nichols did not act alone.” Key tells WND: “The final report represents years of extensive investigation and countless interviews. It contains information never reported before in any forum.” (Dougherty 5/4/2001)

Gore Vidal and friend.Gore Vidal and friend. [Source: Economist]Author Gore Vidal says he will attend the execution of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997). Vidal was offered one of three witness slots McVeigh was given for friends or family members. Vidal says he has “exchanged several letters” with McVeigh since McVeigh wrote him in 1998 about an article Vidal wrote on the Bill of Rights. Vidal says that while he does not approve of the bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), he and McVeigh share some views on the federal government. “He’s very intelligent,” Vidal says of McVeigh. “He’s not insane.” Vidal says he and McVeigh agree that the federal government went far beyond its limits in the FBI’s assault on the Branch Davidian compound outside of Waco, Texas, an assault that resulted in the deaths of 78 people (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). “This guy’s got a case—you don’t send the FBI in to kill women and children,” Vidal says. “The boy has a sense of justice.” Vidal says he intends to write an article for Vanity Fair about the execution. (New York Times 5/7/2001)

New York Times reporter James Sterngold goes to Kingman, Arizona, to interview people there about a former resident, convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997), who now awaits execution (see June 11-13, 1997). While many in the small desert town continue to voice their suspicion of, and opposition to, the federal government as McVeigh did, they do not endorse McVeigh’s actions. McVeigh’s friend Walter “Mac” McCarty, an elderly ex-Marine who always carries a gun on his hip, recalls McVeigh attending some of his courses on handgun usage and safety (see February - July 1994). McCarty says he is angry at McVeigh for blowing up the Murrah Federal Building and killing 168 people (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). He calls the bombing senseless, but has an equal amount of anger and criticism for the FBI’s actions after the bombing, when he says agents from that bureau descended on the town and harassed its citizens. Kingman is not a haven for anti-government extremists, McCarty says. “There never was at any time a really organized militia or group like that around Kingman, and I would know,” he says. There are some people around here who think that way, I can tell you that. But it’s not organized like they say.” McCarty’s statement does not completely coincide with Kingman history. Arizona has had a number of active militias in the recent past, according to Kingman Police Chief Larry J. Butler, and some terrorist attacks, the largest being the derailment of an Amtrak train six months after McVeigh detonated his bomb (see October 9, 1995). Butler says during the mid-1990s, he would occasionally hear of hunters coming across makeshift survivalist camps in the desert. Butler remembers some “zealots” who would argue with his officers, claiming the government had no right to force them to register their cars or get drivers’ licenses, but he says those confrontations had dwindled away to almost nothing. Butler says: “To the extent there were any, Tim McVeigh killed the feelings for militias around here. I can tell you, there’s no sympathy for them.” Steve Johnson of the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department, agrees, saying: “I can’t say that they are here and I can’t say that they aren’t here. We just don’t see them.” Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center say that since McVeigh’s bombing, the number of militia groups in Arizona has dropped sharply. (Sterngold 5/10/2001)

The Justice Department reveals that it failed to turn over nearly 4,000 pages of documentary evidence to the defense in the trial of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and June 2, 1997). Attorney General John Ashcroft postpones McVeigh’s execution (see January 16, 2001) for 30 days to allow defense attorneys to review the newly released documents. (Douglas O. Linder 2001; Johnston and Marquis 5/11/2001; Romano and Eggen 5/11/2001; Fox News 4/13/2005) Apparently many of the documents relate to the FBI’s investigation into the never-identified “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995), which the agency now terms a “dead-end” investigation. Sources say many of the documents are “302 forms,” the forms that document the raw interviews conducted by agents with witnesses. (Romano and Eggen 5/11/2001; Mayhem (.net) 4/2009) The documents were found by bureau archivists in Oklahoma City as they canvassed the agency’s 56 field offices in a final search of records related to the bombing in anticipation of McVeigh’s execution (see June 11-13, 1997). Lawyers for both McVeigh and his convicted co-conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) were legally entitled to review the records as they prepared for the two trials. Justice Department spokesperson Mindy Tucker issues the following statement: “On Tuesday, May 8, the Department of Justice notified Timothy McVeigh’s attorney of a number of FBI documents that should have been provided to them during the discovery phase of the trial. While the department is confident the documents do not in any way create any reasonable doubt about McVeigh’s guilt and do not contradict his repeated confessions of guilt, the department is concerned that McVeigh’s attorneys were not able to review them at the appropriate time.” The FBI blames its obsolete computer system for the error. Prosecutors say the documents were not material to either case. McVeigh’s former lawyer Stephen Jones says, “I said all along they weren’t giving us everything.” (Johnston and Marquis 5/11/2001; Indianapolis Star 2003) Law professor James S. Liebman, who helped conduct an extensive study of death penalty appeals across the country, says the failure to produce the documents is “something I’ve just never heard of.… I can tell you, it’s extremely rare if it’s ever happened before.” (Romano and Eggen 5/11/2001)

New York Times reporter David Stout observes that the FBI’s admitted failure to turn over documents to convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, June 2, 1997, and May 10-11, 2001) will fuel conspiracy theories that will last for years. Attorney General John Ashcroft admitted as much when he ordered a delay in McVeigh’s scheduled execution to review the incident, saying, “If any questions or doubts remain about this case, it would cast a permanent cloud over justice.” Stout writes: “But for some people the cloud has been there all along, and always will be. They will never accept the government’s assertion that the withholding of the documents was simple human, bureaucratic error. And so the 1995 bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City seems likely to join the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as events whose truth—in the eyes of some Americans—is forever untold.” Charles Key, a former Oklahoma state legislator who has recently released a statement packed with assertions of a larger conspiracy and government malfeasance surrounding the bombing (see May 4, 2001), has been particularly vocal in his scorn over the document incident, and his contention that it is just part of a larger conspiracy by the government to cover up the truth behind the bombing. McVeigh’s former lawyer Stephen Jones seems to agree with Key; in his recent book (see August 14-27, 1997) Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma Bombing Conspiracy, Jones asserts: “The real story of the bombing, as the McVeigh defense pursued it, is complex, shadowy, and sinister. McVeigh, like the government, had its own reasons to keep it so. It stretches, web-like, from America’s heartland to the nation’s capital, the Far East, Europe, and the Middle East, and much of it remains a mystery.” Others go even farther in their beliefs. Charles Baldridge of Terre Haute, Indiana, where McVeigh is incarcerated awaiting execution, says, “I won’t say that McVeigh didn’t do it, but he wasn’t the brains, he wasn’t the one who orchestrated it.” Asked who orchestrated the bombing, Baldridge replies, “The government.” Many people believe that if the government did not actually plan and execute the bombing, it allowed it to happen, in order to use it as an excuse for passing anti-terrorism laws and curbing basic freedoms. Many of the same conspiracy theories that sprouted in the aftermath of the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) are now appearing in the public discourse about the Oklahoma City bombing, Stout notes. (Stout 5/13/2001)

Convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) demands a new trial, saying that the recent cache of documents “unearthed” by the FBI relating to the bombing investigation (see May 10-11, 2001) supported his defense. Many of the documents concern the FBI’s investigation into a suspect known as “John Doe No. 2” (see April 15, 1995, 9:00 p.m. April 17, 1995, 3:00 p.m. April 17, 1995, April 18, 1995, April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995), which the agency now terms a “dead-end” investigation. (Thomas 5/27/2001; Mayhem (.net) 4/2009) Lawyers for both Nichols and convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) will receive the documents. (Thomas 5/27/2001)

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh admits that the bureau made a “serious error” in failing to produce nearly 4,000 pages of documents related to the Oklahoma City bombing before the convictions of conspirators Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) and Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998). McVeigh’s lawyers are seeking a delay in McVeigh’s execution to give them a chance to review the newly-released documents (see May 10-11, 2001); the execution, scheduled for today, has already been postponed until June 11. Nichols’s lawyers have asked for a new trial based on the documents’ release (see May 15, 2001). In a hearing before a House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee, Freeh gives details of how the breakdown occurred, and says he has ordered immediate corrective steps. “The FBI committed a serious error by not ensuring that every piece of information was properly accounted for and, when appropriate, provided to the prosecutors so that they could fulfill their discovery obligations,” Freeh tells the House committee members. “It was our unquestionable obligation to identify every document regardless of where it was generated and regardless of where in our many, many offices it resided.” However, Freeh says, none of the documents would have had a bearing on the trials of either McVeigh or Nichols: “Several lawyers and agents from the Justice Department and the FBI conducted a page-by-page review of the material. Nothing in the documents raises any doubt about the guilt of McVeigh and Nichols.” Representative David R. Obey (D-WI) says, “I find it incredibly frustrating that year after year the agency which is supposed to be the quintessential example of excellence in law enforcement winds up being an example of Mr. Foul-up.” (Johnston 5/17/2001) Lawyers for both Nichols and McVeigh will receive the documents. (Thomas 5/27/2001)

A scene from the UW Horticulture Center fire.A scene from the UW Horticulture Center fire. [Source: Associated Press]Two college students set off a firebomb at the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture that causes $7 million in damages. No one is injured in the blast, caused by several time-delayed fire bombs. Lacey Phillabaum and Jennifer Kolar are affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997), which will take credit for the bombing. ELF’s plan was to target genetically-engineered poplar trees at the center, but the bomb also destroys other research projects, including wetlands restoration and endangered stickweed plants. Since 2000, ELF has targeted companies and government facilities involved in genetic engineering; a professor involved in the poplar project, Toby Bradshaw, received timber-industry funding for the research. ELF’s statement after the bombing calls the genetically engineered poplars “an ecological nightmare” for the diversity of native forests. Bradshaw will say that most of the damage he suffered was to his office; a greenhouse containing some 80 genetically-engineered poplars survives unscathed. “The truth is that we’re dealing with a bunch of misinformed… folks who don’t understand the research that was being carried out,” Bradshaw will say. “Even though I was the target, I am the one who was least affected.” Of charges that his “mutant” trees would damage the environment, Bradshaw says his work will almost certainly never “see the outside of a greenhouse.” The UW bombing is one of two planned for the day of May 21; a second bombing also occurs at a Clatskanie, Oregon, poplar farm owned by a timber firm, claiming two buildings and a dozen vehicles. Five years later, Phillabaum and Kolar will plead guilty to participating in the firebombing and other, lesser charges in return for their cooperation in a federal investigation into attacks mounted by ELF and its sister organization, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976). US Attorney John McKay will say, “These violent acts of destruction are not a valid form of political speech.” Both will receive significantly smaller prison terms than they may have received had they gone to trial and been convicted of all counts. Three other ELF members were at the scene: William C. Rodgers, a longtime ELF activist who will commit suicide in an Arizona jail in 2005 (see October 19, 1998); Justin Solondz, who helped assemble the bombs and is now a fugitive; and Briana Waters, who has been indicted for serving as a lookout for the UW bombing. (Murphy 6/9/2001; Bernton and Clarridge 10/5/2006)

One of the documents turned over to the lawyers for convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirators Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) and Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) is a report about a purported eyewitness to the bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) whose statements were attacked during McVeigh’s trial. Eyewitness Morris John Kuper Jr. called the FBI two days after the bombing to say that an hour before the bombing, he saw a man resembling McVeigh walking in the company of another man near the Murrah Federal Building. He told agents that he saw both men get into an old, light-colored car similar to the Mercury Marquis McVeigh was arrested in later that morning (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). In court, Kuper described the other man as being similar to a sketch of the suspected, never-identified “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995). Kuper also testified that he told agents they should check security cameras at two nearby buildings to see if they caught anything, but, Kuper told the court, “they took my name and phone number and never contacted me again.” FBI documents show that he contacted the FBI via email in October 1995, not on April 21 as he claimed; US Attorney Patrick Ryan challenged Kuper’s credibility in court over the discrepancy in dates. The newly discovered document details Kuper’s conversation with agents on April 21. Ryan says now that he never knew the document existed: “I certainly would never intentionally tell the jury someone had not come forward for six months if I knew they had come forward a couple of days after the bombing.” Ryan says that he still believes Kuper and other defense witnesses who claimed to have seen others accompanying McVeigh before the bombing were “fairly unreliable. The problem with any of these witnesses, even if some were right, you didn’t know which were the right ones and which were the wrong ones.” At the time, fellow prosecutor Beth Wilkinson compared the “John Doe No. 2” accounts to “Elvis sightings.” McVeigh has also said that “John Doe No. 2” does not exist. (Thomas 5/27/2001)

Michael Fortier, a friend of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) who cooperated with the prosecution of McVeigh and fellow conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) in order to escape prosecution for his own participation in the bomb plot, says through his attorneys that federal prosecutors lied in order to get a harsher sentence for him. Fortier was given 12 years in prison for his actions (see May 27, 1998). During his sentencing hearing, prosecutors argued that Fortier’s sentence should exceed standard guidelines because of the magnitude of the crime. They argued that Fortier knew profits from the sale of stolen guns would be used to help finance the bombing because he was present when his wife, Lori, and McVeigh discussed it (see April 3-4, 1995). Recently, prosecutor Sean Connelly conceded there was no evidence Fortier was present during the conversation between his wife and McVeigh or was told by either one of them what had been said. (Mayhem (.net) 4/2009)

Chief Ray Downey of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) firmly believes that a major terrorist attack in the United States is imminent. According to a book written by his nephew, in the months before 9/11, Downey has on his desk “all the reports he can get his hands on about the threat of terrorism.” This is because he “has become convinced that a major terrorist attack is coming and that very few people in New York, or the United States, are prepared for this eventuality.” (Downey 2004, pp. 218-219)
Fire Chief Warns, 'We're Gonna Get Hit Bad' - Downey was in charge of rescue operations following the terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993 (see February 26, 1993), the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), and the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996. (Goldstein 11/22/2001; Fire Engineering 3/2002) Having witnessed the aftermath of these attacks, he now feels “certain that a big one [is] coming next.” Whenever a conversation turns to the subject of terrorism, he warns, “We’re gonna get hit bad.” Furthermore, the 1993 WTC bombing demonstrated to him that Islamic terrorists see New York as their prime target. Downey has discussed his concerns with his men and outlined various scenarios to them. He thinks the “big one” is most likely going to be an attack involving a chemical or dirty bomb in an urban environment. (Downey 2004, pp. 224)
Chief Has Planned the Fire Department's Response to Terrorism - Downey is in charge of the FDNY’s renowned Special Operations Command (SOC). (Crittle and Venezia 12/16/2001; Fire Engineering 3/2002) The SOC is an elite group of firefighters who respond to unique fire and emergency situations, and its members are trained to deal with catastrophes. (McPhee 10/21/2001; Rifilato 7/13/2007; Smithsonian 8/31/2013) As head of the unit, Downey is responsible for planning the FDNY’s response to terrorist attacks. He has “worked out various scenarios for terrorist attacks—who would be the first, second, and third of his companies on scene; what would each unit do,” according to the book by his nephew. He has “studied floor plans of major landmarks, looked at aerial views of [New York], thought about traffic routes, bridges, and tunnels.” (Downey 2004, pp. 222-223)
Chief Serves on a Government Commission on Terrorism - Downey is also a member of the Gilmore Commission, an advisory panel established in 1999 to assess America’s capabilities for responding to domestic terrorist incidents involving weapons of mass destruction. (Goldstein 11/22/2001; Fire Engineering 3/2002) And in his spare time, he has traveled around the country, “preaching the need to prepare for terrorism,” according to Hal Bruno, chairman of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. (Moore 9/13/2001)

On June 3, 2001, a British newspaper reveals that Hamid Aich, who is on the FBI’s international wanted list, is living in Dublin where he is applying for asylum. (Breslin 2/18/2001; O'Shea and Hanley 6/3/2001) Irish intelligence has been monitoring Aich’s movements since 1997, when authorities tied him to the mass murder of 77 tourists in Luxor, Egypt (see November 18, 1997). (Tynan and Lane 10/17/2001; O'Neill 11/8/2001) He has since been linked to a number of militant groups (see, e.g., December 14, 1999). It is believed that between 1999 and 2001, Aich assisted 22 Islamic terrorist organizations, and even funded non-Islamic groups, for instance giving $200,000 to the ETA, a separatist group in the Basque region of Spain. Aich was also the director of Mercy International’s Ireland branch. (This charity has several known al-Qaeda connections by this time (see 1988-Spring 1995 and Late 1996-August 20, 1998).) Despite these connections, he will continue to live openly in Dublin after the newspaper discloses his location. (Young 9/17/2001) Irish authorities only publicly say, “Aich’s case is at a very delicate stage.” (O'Shea and Hanley 6/3/2001) Then, on July 24, he leaves Ireland using a false passport. The FBI, which took no action against him while he was living in Dublin, is reportedly “furious” with Irish police for allowing him to escape. He has not been heard of since, and he has not been included in any known lists of wanted al-Qaeda leaders. It is believed that Aich eventually ends up in Afghanistan. After 9/11, Aich will be described as “one of the FBI’s chief targets” and “one of bin Laden’s most trusted men” who ranks seventh in al-Qaeda’s hierarchy. (Young 9/17/2001)

William Pierce, the head of the National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the infamous race-war fantasy The Turner Diaries (see 1978), says that Timothy McVeigh, the convicted Oklahoma City bomber (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) who was inspired by Pierce’s book, is a “man of principle” who is “willing to accept the consequences” for what he did. However, Pierce does not give his blessing to McVeigh’s act of terrorism, saying: “I wouldn’t have chosen to do what he did.… It’s really shameful to kill a lot of people when there’s no hope for accomplishing anything.” He says that while some of his NA members quit after the bombing, new ones joined: “Probably, on the whole, it was helpful,” he says. (Thomas 6/9/2001; Anti-Defamation League 2005)

A small number of Branch Davidians, who live a quiet existence outside of Waco, Texas, and worship in a church dedicated in April 2000 (see September 18, 1999 - April 19, 2000) and built very near the site of the April 1993 conflagration that killed almost 80 of their fellow Davidians (see April 19, 1993), say they have no connection to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh, a racist white separatist who evidence shows used the 1993 tragedy as a spark for his decision to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the Davidian tragedy (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), is due to be executed for his crime (see June 2, 1997). Davidian leader Clive Doyle says his group does not appreciate McVeigh’s actions. “I don’t see that blowing up a building that kills a whole bunch of kids really makes a strike against the government or law enforcement, if that’s what you’re against,” he says. “It didn’t hurt them all that much and it didn’t help us.” Doyle escaped the April 1993 fire that destroyed the Mt. Carmel compound, but lost his 18-year-old daughter in the flames. Doyle and others say that in recent weeks more and more radical-right extremists have come to view the site of the conflagration; he has begun building a security fence to keep out unwanted visitors. Robert Darden, an English professor who wrote a book on the Branch Davidians and the Waco siege, says the sect is generally peaceful, and had been so until its leader David Koresh led its members down a path of armed militancy. Doyle says he does not believe Koresh would have approved of either the McVeigh bombing or any armed assault against government authorities. He recalls Koresh welcoming a man who offered to rally thousands of militiamen in an attack on federal agents, but also says Koresh discouraged such an action. Ron Goins, who is not a Davidian but who often visits the new church and its members, says, “I felt the same rage [as McVeigh], but I didn’t feel the responsibility upon myself to take lives, especially since there were innocent people who died in Oklahoma City.” Moreover, Goins says, McVeigh’s bombing shifted public attention away from scrutiny of the government and toward “mad bombers, lone gunmen, and things like that.” Doyle says he is unhappy that people now connect the Davidian tragedy with the Oklahoma City bombing. (Embry 6/10/2001)

Lawyers for FBI laboratory employees send an urgent letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft alleging that a key prosecution witness in the trial of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) may have lied during McVeigh’s trial. The accusations center around Steven Burmeister, now the FBI laboratory’s chief of scientific analysis, who testified that the FBI crime lab found residues of explosives on the clothing that McVeigh was wearing when he was arrested after the bomb exploded (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). The letter reads in part, “Material evidence presented by the government in the OKBOMB prosecution through the testimony of Mr. Burmeister appears to be false, misleading, and potentially fabricated,” referring to testimony Burmeister had given in an unrelated civil case, which contradicted his testimony in the McVeigh case; Burmeister had talked about the restrictions on his work area and the requirement that laboratory employees wear protective clothing. The letter is sent to Ashcroft by fax and by courier with the notation “urgent matter for the immediate attention of the attorney general.” The letter will sit in Ashcroft’s clerical office for nearly two months before being turned over to the FBI. Justice Department spokesperson Barbara Comstock will say that neither Ashcroft nor other top department officials ever saw the letter, and it was never reviewed to determine if it should be given to McVeigh’s lawyers. Prosecutors used Burmeister’s testimony to determine the exact composition of the bomb McVeigh used to bring down the Murrah Federal Building and kill 168 people. The judge in the trial, Richard P. Matsch, refused to allow McVeigh’s lawyers to hear criticisms of the crime lab’s evidence handling (see January 27, 1997 and May 20, 1997). The accusations against Burmeister were never given to McVeigh’s lawyers, even as a judge was weighing the option to delay McVeigh’s execution because the government failed to turn over other evidence (see May 10-11, 2001, May 16, 2001, and June 1-7, 2001). The letter is later turned over to the lawyers of convicted bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997, June 4, 1998, and May 15, 2001), who will face 160 counts of murder in an upcoming trial by the State of Oklahoma (see September 5, 2001). (New York Times 5/1/2003)

The execution chamber in the Terre Haute, Indiana, federal prison. McVeigh is strapped into this chair and executed by lethal injection.The execution chamber in the Terre Haute, Indiana, federal prison. McVeigh is strapped into this chair and executed by lethal injection. [Source: Agence France-Presse / University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law]Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see January 16, 2001) is executed by lethal injection as survivors of the bombing and relatives of the victims watch on closed-circuit television. His last meal was two pints of chocolate chip ice cream. According to his lawyers, McVeigh is “upbeat” about his upcoming execution, saying he prefers dying to life in prison. At 7 a.m., dressed in a shirt, khaki pants, and slip-on shoes, McVeigh is led to the execution chamber and strapped to a padded gurney. The curtains over glass panels separating the chamber from a viewing area are opened to allow 30 people to directly watch McVeigh’s final moments, while another 300 victims and relatives gather in Oklahoma City to watch the event on closed-circuit television. (McVeigh’s father William McVeigh chose not to attend the execution, and later tells reporters that he prefers to remember his son as a smiling toddler.) According to witnesses, McVeigh acts as if he is in control of the proceedings, staring straight into the television cameras until the lethal injection—three injections of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and finally potassium chloride—causes him to slip into unconsciousness and death. McVeigh is pronounced dead at 7:14 a.m. local time. (Douglas O. Linder 2001; Fox News 4/13/2005; Douglas O. Linder 2006; Ottley 2008; Mayhem (.net) 4/2009) His is the first federal execution in over 30 years. (Southern Poverty Law Center 6/2001) McVeigh says nothing before his execution, but issues a written statement quoting from the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley. (Indianapolis Star 2003) The last stanza of the poem reads:
bullet “It matters not how strait the gate,
bullet “How charged with punishments the scroll,
bullet “I am the master of my fate:
bullet “I am the captain of my soul.” (Guardian 6/11/2001; University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law 6/11/2001)
He has written to reporters that his body will be released to one of his attorneys and cremated, and his ashes spread over an undisclosed location. He wrote that he considers the bloodshed caused by his bombing unfortunate, but is not sorry for his actions, calling the bombing a “legit tactic” in his “war” against the federal government. (Mayhem (.net) 4/2009) He has also asked that his body not be autopsied, a request the prison system grants upon his signature on a form reading: “I, Timothy McVeigh, hereby certify; that no abuse has been inflicted upon me while I have been in the custody of the US Bureau of Prisons. I hereby waive any claim of such abuse.” Presumably he signed the form before his execution, as his body will not be autopsied. (Ottley 2008)

John Miller.John Miller. [Source: FBI]ABC News reporter John Miller gives a speech in which he discusses the growing indications that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has plans to carry out an attack in the United States. Miller gives his speech at the annual conference of the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators. (Miller, Stone, and Mitchell 2002, pp. 286-287) The conference, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from June 24 to June 30, is attended by around 700 law enforcement officers from around the world. (German 6/15/2001) Miller will later explain some of the thinking behind his claim that bin Laden could be planning an attack in the US. “At that time,” he will write, “US authorities were divided over where bin Laden would strike next. Most officials believed that he was aiming at ‘soft’ US targets overseas, based on his past actions and electronic phone intercepts of al-Qaeda members around the world.” Other officials, though, taking into account al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Ressam’s failed plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on December 31, 1999 (see December 14, 1999), believe his next attack will take place on US soil. Miller will write that a “spike in phone traffic among suspected al-Qaeda members in the early part of the summer, as well as debriefings of Ressam,” have convinced investigators that bin Laden is planning “a significant operation” and he is “planning it soon.” Furthermore, he will comment, “[N]o one working on the problem seemed to doubt bin Laden’s intentions to target Americans.” (Miller, Stone, and Mitchell 2002, pp. 287) Miller has been a correspondent for ABC News, with a primary focus on terrorism, since 1995. Notably, he interviewed bin Laden in Afghanistan in May 1998 (see May 28, 1998). Before joining ABC News, he spent many years as a television crime reporter in New York, and between 1994 and 1995 served as deputy police commissioner of New York City. (Miller 5/28/1998; Kiesewetter 1/16/2002; Federal Bureau of Investigation 8/23/2005; Powers 10/17/2011)

The three authors of the book Germs, Judith Miller (left), Stephen Engelberg (top), and William Broad (bottom). This was the book Miller was working on before 9/11; it was published several weeks after 9/11.The three authors of the book Germs, Judith Miller (left), Stephen Engelberg (top), and William Broad (bottom). This was the book Miller was working on before 9/11; it was published several weeks after 9/11. [Source: Publicity photo]New York Times reporter Judith Miller learns her government counterterrorism sources are worried that al-Qaeda is going to attack a US target on the Fourth of July holiday. There has been an increase in chatter about an impending attack. In 2005, Miller will recall, “Everyone in Washington was very spun-up in the counterterrorism world at that time. I think everybody knew that an attack was coming—everyone who followed this.… I got the sense that part of the reason that I was being told of what was going on was that the people in counterterrorism were trying to get the word to the president or the senior officials through the press, because they were not able to get listened to themselves.”
Conversation Overheard - She has a conversation with a still-anonymous top-level White House source who reveals there is some concern about a top-secret NSA intercept between two al-Qaeda operatives. She explains, “They had been talking to one another, supposedly expressing disappointment that the United States had not chosen to retaliate more seriously against what had happened to the [USS] Cole. And one al-Qaeda operative was overheard saying to the other, ‘Don’t worry; we’re planning something so big now that the US will have to respond.’ And I was obviously floored by that information. I thought it was a very good story: (1) the source was impeccable; (2) the information was specific, tying al-Qaeda operatives to, at least, knowledge of the attack on the Cole; and (3) they were warning that something big was coming, to which the United States would have to respond. This struck me as a major page one-potential story.”
Not Printed - Miller tells her editor Stephen Engelberg about the story the next day. But Engelberg says, “You have a great first and second paragraph. What’s your third?” Miller finds only one other source to confirm these details.
Yemen Connection - She later learns from her first source that the conversation occurred in Yemen. Though the telephone number is never disclosed, some circumstances suggest one of the parties taking part in the call may have been at the al-Qaeda communications hub in Sana’a, Yemen, that is monitored by US intelligence. One of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar, lives there with his wife and children (see Late August 1998), and communicates there will be forthcoming attacks to at least one family member (see Late October 2000-July 4, 2001). The hijackers in the US apparently call the Yemen hub around this time (see (August 2001)). On July 3, the CIA will request the arrest of Djamel Beghal (see July 3, 2001), an al-Qaeda operative whose calls to the hub are apparently being monitored at this time (see Before July 3, 2001).
Regrets - Miller later regrets not following through more because she “had a book coming out” as well as other stories and that there wasn’t a “sense of immediacy” about the information. In 2005, Engelberg will confirm Miller’s story and agree that he wanted more specifics before running the story. Engelberg also later wonders “maybe I made the wrong call,” asking, “More than once I’ve wondered what would have happened if we’d run the piece?” The New York Times has yet to mention the warning in all of their post-9/11 reporting and the 9/11 Commission has never mentioned anything about the warning either. In 2005, Miller will spend 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal a source and then leave the New York Times after widespread criticism about her reporting. (McCollam 9/2005; O'Connor and Malone 5/18/2006; Strupp 5/18/2006)

Richard Reid, who will attempt to blow himself up on a flight to Miami five months later (see December 22, 2001), is sent on a spying mission to Israel. First, he obtains a new passport from the British consulate in Brussels to hide his travels to Pakistan shown in his old passport. Then Reid flies to Israel with El Al, testing the carrier’s security. He complains that screening has ruined his tape recorder and also notes how many times the cockpit door is opened, finding that the time just before passengers are told to fasten their seatbelts during descent is the best time to strike. In Tel Aviv, he cases buses, trains, churches, buildings, and shopping malls to determine the best targets to attack. Reid also examines tourist sites in Jerusalem, finding security lax at the Western Wall. After leaving Israel, he travels to Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan. Investigators will later discover these details of his travels from a diary found on a computer at an al-Qaeda safe house in Kabul after the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. (O'Neill and McGrory 2006, pp. 228-229)

The NSA monitors calls between an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen and one or more operatives involved in a plot to attack the US embassy in Paris. The communications hub in Yemen is run by Ahmed al-Hada, father-in-law of 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar, who is also involved in the US embassy bombings (see August 4-25, 1998), the USS Cole bombing (see Mid-August 1998-October 2000), and 9/11 (see Early 2000-Summer 2001). The Paris plot is apparently foiled based on this information, although the details are sketchy. (Kaplan and Whitelaw 3/15/2004) The name of the operative or operatives who talk to the communications hub in Yemen is unknown. One candidate is Djamel Beghal, who will be arrested on July 28 (see July 24 or 28, 2001) based on a tip-off issued by the CIA to partner agencies on July 3 (see July 3, 2001). Another is Nizar Trabelsi, who will be arrested on September 13, although Trabelsi may be arrested based on information gleaned from Beghal. Both Beghal (see Spring 1998) and Trabelsi (see September 13, 2001) are connected to a plot to destroy an airliner with a shoe bomb, but this is not stopped (see December 22, 2001).

In 2002, Newsweek will report: “The White House acknowledged for the first time, [President] Bush was privately beginning to worry about the stream of terror warnings he was hearing that summer, most of them aimed at US targets abroad. On July 5, five days before the Phoenix memo (see July 10, 2001), Bush directed [Condoleezza] Rice to figure out what was going on domestically.” (Hirsh and Isikoff 5/27/2002) In 2004, President Bush will explain why he requested this: “[T]he reason I did is because there had been a lot of threat intelligence from overseas. And part of it had to do with the Genoa [Italy] G8 conference that I was going to attend.” (US President 4/19/2004) Though he does not mention it, the chief security concern at the late July 2001 conference he mentions is intelligence that al-Qaeda plans to fly an airplane into the conference. This threat is so widely reported before the conference (with some reports before July 5 (see June 13, 2001 and Mid-July 2001) that the attack is called off (see July 20-22, 2001). For instance, in late June, Time magazine mentioned a German intelligence report of an Osama bin Laden plot “to fly remote-controlled model aircraft packed with Semtex into the conference hall and blow the leaders of the industrialized world to smithereens” (see June 20, 2001). Bush will later claim that this request is specifically for the later-famous August 6, 2001 briefing entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” (see August 6, 2001), although the CIA analysts who draft it will deny this (see July 13, 2004). (US President 4/19/2004)

On July 5, 2001, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke gave a dramatic briefing to representatives from several domestic agencies on the urgent al-Qaeda threat (see July 5, 2001). However, the warnings given generally are not passed on by the attendees back to their respective agencies. The domestic agencies were not questioned about how they planned to address the threat and were not told what was expected of them. According to the 9/11 Commission, attendees later “report that they were told not to disseminate the threat information they received at the meeting. They interpreted this direction to mean that although they could brief their superiors, they could not send out advisories to the field.” One National Security Council official has a different recollection of what happened, recalling that attendees were asked to take the information back to their agencies and “do what you can” with it, subject to classification and distribution restrictions. But, for whatever reason, none of the involved agencies post internal warnings based on the meeting, except for Customs which puts out a general warning based entirely on publicly known historical facts. (9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 258, 264) The FAA issues general and routine threat advisories that don’t reflect the level of urgency expressed by Clarke and others (see January-August 2001). FAA Administrator Jane Garvey later claims she was unaware of a heightened threat level, but in 2005 it will be revealed that about half of the FAA’s daily briefings during this time period referred to bin Laden or al-Qaeda (see April 1, 2001-September 10, 2001). (Johnston and Dwyer 4/18/2004) Clarke said rhetorically in the meeting that he wants to know if a sparrow has fallen from a tree. A senior FBI official attended the meeting and promised a redoubling of the FBI’s efforts. However, just five days after Clarke’s meeting, FBI agent Ken Williams sends off his memo speculating that al-Qaeda may be training operatives as pilots in the US (see July 10, 2001), yet the FBI fails to share this information with Clarke or any other agency. (Gellman 5/17/2002; Clarke 2004, pp. 236-37) The FBI will also fail to tell Clarke about the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui (see August 16, 2001), or what they know about Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar (see August 23, 2001).

FBI agent Ken Williams.FBI agent Ken Williams. [Source: FBI]Phoenix, Arizona, FBI agent Ken Williams sends a memorandum warning about suspicious activities involving a group of Middle Eastern men taking flight training lessons in Arizona. The memo is titled: “Zakaria Mustapha Soubra; IT-OTHER (Islamic Army of the Caucasus),” because it focuses on Zakaria Soubra, a Lebanese flight student in Prescott, Arizona, and his connection with a terror group in Chechnya that has ties to al-Qaeda. It is subtitled: “Osama bin Laden and Al-Muhjiroun supporters attending civil aviation universities/colleges in Arizona.” (Behar 5/22/2002; House 7/24/2003) Williams’ memo is based on an investigation of Sorba that Williams had begun in 2000 (see April 2000), but he had trouble pursuing because of the low priority the Arizona FBI office gave terror investigations (see April 2000-June 2001). Additionally, Williams had been alerted to suspicions about radical militants and aircraft at least three other times (see October 1996; 1998; November 1999-August 2001). In the memo, Williams does the following:
bullet Names nine other suspect students from Pakistan, India, Kenya, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. (Schrom 10/1/2002) Hijacker Hani Hanjour, attending flight school in Arizona in early 2001 and probably continuing into the summer of 2001 (see Summer 2001), is not one of the students, but, as explained below, it seems two of the students know him. (US Congress 7/24/2003, pp. 135 pdf file; Smith 7/25/2003)
bullet Notes that he interviewed some of these students, and heard some of them make hostile comments about the US. Additionally, he noticed that they were suspiciously well informed about security measures at US airports. (Schrom 10/1/2002)
bullet Notes an increasing, “inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” taking flight lessons in Arizona. (Schrom 10/1/2002; US Congress 7/24/2003, pp. 135 pdf file)
bullet Suspects that some of the ten people he has investigated are connected to al-Qaeda. (US Congress 7/24/2003, pp. 135 pdf file) One person on the list, Ghassan al Sharbi, will be arrested in Pakistan in March 2002 with al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002). Al Sharbi attended a flight school in Prescott, Arizona. He also apparently attended the training camps in Afghanistan and swore loyalty to bin Laden in the summer of 2001. He apparently knows Hani Hanjour in Arizona (see October 1996-Late April 1999). He also is the roommate of Soubra, the main target of the memo. (Krikorian 1/24/2003; 9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 521)
bullet Discovers that one of them was communicating through an intermediary with Abu Zubaida. This apparently is a reference to Hamed al Sulami, who had been telephoning a Saudi imam known to be Zubaida’s spiritual advisor. Al Sulami is an acquaintance of Hanjour in Arizona (see October 1996-Late April 1999). (Mercury News (San Jose) 5/23/2002; 9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 520-521, 529)
bullet Discusses connections between several of the students and a radical group called Al-Muhajiroun. (Mercury News (San Jose) 5/23/2002) This group supported bin Laden, and issued a fatwa, or call to arms, that included airports on a list of acceptable terror targets. (Solomon 5/22/2002) Soubra, the main focus of the memo, is a member of Al-Muhajiroun and an outspoken radical. He met with Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of Al-Muhajiroun in Britain, and started an Arizona chapter of the organization. After 9/11, some US officials will suspect that Soubra has ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He will be held two years, then deported to Lebanon in 2004. (Connell 10/28/2001; Krikorian 1/24/2003; Wagner 5/2/2004; Sherman 11/2004) Though Williams doesn’t include it in his memo, in the summer of 1998, Bakri publicized a fax sent by bin Laden to him that listed al-Qaeda’s four objectives in fighting the US. The first objective was “bring down their airliners.” (see Summer 1998). (Connell 10/28/2001)
bullet Warns of a possible “effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the US to attend civil aviation universities and colleges” (Behar 5/22/2002) , so they can later hijack aircraft. (Schrom 10/1/2002)
bullet Recommends that the “FBI should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities and colleges around the country. FBI field offices with these types of schools in their area should establish appropriate liaison. FBI [headquarters] should discuss this matter with other elements of the US intelligence community and task the community for any information that supports Phoenix’s suspicions.” (House 7/24/2003) (The FBI has already done this, but because of poor FBI communications, Williams is not aware of the report.)
bullet Recommends that the FBI ask the State Department to provide visa data on flight school students from Middle Eastern countries, which will facilitate FBI tracking efforts. (Risen 5/4/2002)
The memo is addressed to the following FBI Agents:
bullet Dave Frasca, chief of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI headquarters;
bullet Elizabeth Harvey Matson, Mark Connor and Fred Stremmel, Intelligence Operations Specialists in the RFU;
bullet Rod Middleton, acting chief of the Usama bin Laden Unit (UBLU);
bullet Jennifer Maitner, an Intelligence Operations Specialist in the UBLU;
bullet Jack Cloonan, an agent on the New York FBI’s bin Laden unit, the I-49 squad; (see January 1996 and Spring 2000).
bullet Michael S. Butsch, an agent on another New York FBI squad dealing with other Sunni terrorists. (Federal Bureau of Investigation 7/10/2001 pdf file; US Congress 7/24/2003, pp. 135 pdf file)
However, the memo is not uploaded into the FBI’s information system until the end of the month and is apparently not received by all these people (see July 27, 2001 and after). Williams also shares some concerns with the CIA (see (July 27, 2001)). (Mercury News (San Jose) 5/23/2002) One anonymous government official who has seen the memo says, “This was as actionable a memo as could have been written by anyone.” (Insight 5/27/2002) However, the memo is merely marked “routine,” rather than “urgent.” It is generally ignored, not shared with other FBI offices, and the recommendations are not taken. One colleague in New York replies at the time that the memo is “speculative and not very significant.” (Schrom 10/1/2002; US Congress 7/24/2003, pp. 135 pdf file) Williams is unaware of many FBI investigations and leads that could have given weight to his memo. Authorities later claim that Williams was only pursuing a hunch, but one familiar with classified information says, “This was not a vague hunch. He was doing a case on these guys.” (Mercury News (San Jose) 5/23/2002)

A screenshot from ‘Stormfront for Kids,’ depicting the site’s logo and two Confederate-era flags.A screenshot from ‘Stormfront for Kids,’ depicting the site’s logo and two Confederate-era flags. [Source: USA Today]USA Today reports on the participation of Derek Black, the 12-year-old son of Don Black, in his father’s Web activities. The elder Black operates Stormfront, the Internet’s first large-scale Web site promoting racial hatred and white supremacy (see March 1995). Black is proud of his son, telling a reporter that he “[c]ouldn’t ask for anything more.” He keeps a framed photo of Derek dressed in a Confederate soldier’s uniform above his desk in his home office. Derek runs the site’s children’s section, Stormfront for Kids, under his father’s supervision. The children’s pages feature puzzles, games, animated Confederate flags, audio files of white-pride songs, what USA Today calls “an inflammatory article about Martin Luther King Jr.,” and a personal statement from Derek asking visitors to stop sending him hate mail. “I get a lot of people who think I’m just a pawn in this horrible game of lies,” says Derek, who has been home-schooled since third grade by his mother, Chloe. “One person said: ‘Don’t listen to what your father says. Go turn on the Discovery Channel. Find out what the real world is like.’ Why would I turn on the TV to find out what the real world is like?” Stormfront for Kids is emblematic of the white supremacist movement’s outreach to younger potential members. Of the estimated 2,500 “hate” Web sites, 44 have sections designed for children, teens, and parents, according to Mark Weitzman of the Wiesenthal Center’s Task Force Against Hate. Though the number of sites may be small, USA Today reports that child psychologists and others monitoring their activity are alarmed about their reach and influence. “If you have a susceptible child who is angry and depressed, the sites could push a child toward certain behavior,” says psychiatrist Sirgay Sanger, director of New York City’s Early Care Center. “It’s the first step toward throwing a rock.” Weitzman says: “The number of people involved in these movements is not the only important factor. Sometimes when the numbers are low, members think the only way they can get their message across is through an act of domestic terrorism or extreme violence.” The most effective way that Stormfront and other groups such as the National Alliance (see 1970-1974) reach young people is through “skinhead” music, says Jordan Kessler, director of an Internet monitoring unit for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “This is a language kids understand—a band of cool-looking young guys blasting out music.” One label, Resistance Records (see Late 1993 and Summer 1999), sold “close to $1 million” in merchandise last year, mostly online, according to Erich Gliebe, the leader of the National Alliance and the CEO of Resistance Records. That label sells items such as Nazi parade flags and a CD titled “War Songs of the 3rd Reich, Vol. 3.” Black says, “People say, ‘You’re teaching your son Satan.’” But, he says, “I think anyone who is critical of me for instilling in my son my world view has lost track of how a society should function.” (McKelvey 7/16/2001)

An unknown intelligence agency intercepts a telephone call between alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh. (9/11 Commission 2004; 9/11 Commission 3/18/2004) In the call, KSM and bin al-Shibh discuss the state of the 9/11 plot, in particular the fact that Ziad Jarrah, one of the proposed pilots, may drop out. They speak in a code, substituting unexceptional words for what they really mean. (9/11 Commission 3/18/2004) KSM instructs bin al-Shibh to send the “skirts,” meaning money forwarded to bin al-Shibh by an associate of KSM, to “Sally,” meaning Moussaoui. (9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 246) The reason for this is that “Teresa,” meaning Jarrah, is “late,” i.e. he is wavering and may drop out of the plot, due to possible conflicts with lead hijacker Mohamed Atta about Jarrah’s isolation from the conspiracy. It therefore appears that KSM is thinking of Moussaoui as a replacement for Jarrah. According to a 9/11 Commission memo, KSM says something like, “if there is a divorce, it will cost a lot of money.” Bin al-Shibh then tries to reassure him, saying it will be okay. The conversation also mentions “Danish leather,” an apparent reference to failed “20th hijacker” Mohamed al-Khatani (see August 4, 2001). (9/11 Commission 3/18/2004) The agency which intercepts this call is never identified to the public, although the NSA is reportedly intercepting such calls to and from KSM at this time (see Summer 2001). The 9/11 Commission will mention the call in a staff statement and its final report, but will not mention that it was intercepted, merely citing detainee interrogations as the source of information about it. (9/11 Commission 6/16/2004, pp. 16-17; 9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 246, 530)

Djamel Beghal.
Djamel Beghal. [Source: Public domain]High-level al-Qaeda operative Djamel Beghal is arrested in Dubai on his way back from Afghanistan. Earlier in the month the CIA sent friendly intelligence agencies a list of al-Qaeda agents they wanted to be immediately apprehended, and Beghal was on the list (see July 3, 2001).
Information Obtained - Beghal quickly starts to talk, and tells French investigators about a plot to attack the American embassy in Paris. Crucially, he provides new details about the international-operations role of top al-Qaeda deputy Abu Zubaida, whom he had been with a short time before. (Erlanger and Hedges 12/28/2001; Elliott 8/12/2002) One European official says Beghal talks about “very important figures in the al-Qaeda structure, right up to bin Laden’s inner circle. [He] mention[s] names, responsibilities and functions—people we weren’t even aware of before. This is important stuff.” (Elliott 11/12/2001) One French official says of Beghal’s interrogations, “We shared everything we knew with the Americans.” (Elliott 5/19/2002)
Link to 9/11 - The New York Times later will report, “Enough time and work could have led investigators from Mr. Beghal to an address in Hamburg where Mohamed Atta and his cohorts had developed and planned the Sept. 11 attacks.” Beghal had frequently associated with Zacarias Moussaoui. However, although Moussaoui is arrested (see August 16, 2001) around the same time that Beghal is revealing the names and details of all his fellow operatives, Beghal is apparently not asked about Moussaoui. (Erlanger and Hedges 12/28/2001; Elliott 8/12/2002)
Timing of Arrest - Most media accounts place the arrest on July 28. However, in a 2007 book CIA Director George Tenet will say he received a briefing about the arrest on July 24. (Tenet 2007, pp. 156-157)

Dan Rather in July 2001 presenting the story about John Ashcroft.Dan Rather in July 2001 presenting the story about John Ashcroft. [Source: CBS via Banded Artists Productions]CBS News reports that Attorney General Ashcroft has stopped flying commercial airlines due to a threat assessment, but “neither the FBI nor the Justice Department… would identify [to CBS] what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.” (CBS News 7/26/2001) One newspaper reports, “Ashcroft demonstrated an amazing lack of curiosity when asked if he knew anything about the threat. ‘Frankly, I don’t,’ he told reporters.” (Sorensen 6/3/2002) It is later reported that he stopped flying in July based on threat assessments made on May 8 and June 19. In May 2002, it is claimed the threat assessment had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, but Ashcroft walked out of his office rather than answer questions about it. (Associated Press 5/16/2002) The San Francisco Chronicle will later conclude, “The FBI obviously knew something was in the wind.… The FBI did advise Ashcroft to stay off commercial aircraft. The rest of us just had to take our chances.” (Sorensen 6/3/2002) CBS’s Dan Rather will later ask of this warning: “Why wasn’t it shared with the public at large?” (Kurtz 5/27/2002) On July 5, the CIA had warned Ashcroft to expect multiple, imminent al-Qaeda attacks overseas (see July 5, 2001) and on July 12 the FBI warned him about the al-Qaeda threat within the US (see July 12, 2001).

FBI headquarters.FBI headquarters. [Source: GlobeXplorer]FBI headquarters receives the Phoenix Memo, but does not act on it. The memo was drafted by Arizona FBI agent Ken Williams and warns that a large number of Islamic extremists are learning to fly in the US. It is dated 17 days earlier, but is not uploaded until this date (see July 10, 2001). Although the memo is addressed to eight specific agents, it is apparently not received by all of them. The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General will later say that the memo was not delivered directly to the addressees, but uploaded to a central dispatching point, from where it was assigned to Radical Fundamentalist Unit agent Elizabeth Matson on July 30. Before sending the memo, Williams called both Matson and her colleague Fred Stremmel to talk to them about it. Matson pulls up the memo, which has “routine” precedence, and prints and reads it. However, she thinks it should go to the bin Laden unit. A week later she discusses the matter with bin Laden unit agent Jennifer Maitner and they agree that Maitner will do some research and then they will talk again. Matson will later tell the Office of Inspector General she may have mentioned the memo to her superior, but is not sure. Her superior will say he was not consulted. Maitner discusses the memo with bin Laden unit chief Rod Middleton and also sends it to the FBI’s Portland, Oregon, field office, which was previously interested in one of the men named in the memo. However, she does not do anything else with it before 9/11, apparently due to her high workload. The FBI will later acknowledge the memo did not receive the sufficient or timely analysis that it deserved. (US Department of Justice 11/2004, pp. 65-77, 80 pdf file) The memo is also seen by the FBI’s New York field office (see July 27, 2001 or Shortly After), another RFU agent researching the Moussaoui case (see August 22, 2001) and possibly the CIA’s bin Laden unit (see (July 27, 2001)).

The FBI’s New York field office, which specializes in international terrorism, receives Ken Williams’ Phoenix Memo, but only briefly checks the named radicals and does not respond to Williams. In the memo, Williams noted that there is a suspiciously large number of Islamic extremists learning to fly in Arizona. Some of them will turn out to be connected to 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour (see July 10, 2001). Williams sent the memo to FBI headquarters (see July 27, 2001 and after) and the I-49 squad in the New York FBI field office. In New York, the memo is read by FBI agent Jack Cloonan, a member of the I-49 squad. Cloonan believes that the memo has a “glaring deficiency,” as he thinks bin Laden does not have a support operation in Arizona any more. He forms the opinion that William’s theory and conclusions are “faulty.” However, two of the hijackers were in Arizona in early 2001 (see December 12, 2000-March 2001) and some of the people named in the memo will later be linked to bin Laden (see October 1996-Late April 1999). In August 2001, Cloonan will ask, “Who’s going to conduct the thirty thousand interviews? When the f_ck do we have time for this?” Nonetheless, he checks out the eight names mentioned in the memo. He will apparently find nothing, although several individuals associated with the Phoenix cell are Sunni extremists (see November 1999-August 2001). The memo is also read by an analyst and an auditor in New York while they are researching other matters, and Cloonan will tell the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) he may have discussed the memo with some of his colleagues. The OIG’s report will say Cloonan told investigators that “he did not contact Williams or anyone else in Phoenix to discuss the [memo].” However, in a 2006 book author Lawrence Wright, citing an interview with Cloonan, will say that Cloonan spoke to Williams’ supervisor in Phoenix about it. (US Department of Justice 11/2004, pp. 77-9 pdf file; Wright 2006, pp. 350, 426) The I-49 squad possibly forwards the memo to the Alec Station bin Laden unit at the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center (see (July 27, 2001)).

Ratcheting up the anti-Iraq rhetoric in the press, neoconservative Reuel Marc Gerecht writes in the Weekly Standard that the US is a “cowering superpower” for not directly challenging Iraq, and demands that President Bush explain “how we will live with Saddam [Hussein] and his nuclear weapons.” (Unger 2007, pp. 206)

David Schippers.
David Schippers. [Source: Publicity photo]David Schippers, the House Judiciary Committee’s chief investigator in the Clinton impeachment trial and the lawyer for FBI agent Robert Wright since September 1999, will later claim that he was warned about an upcoming al-Qaeda attack on lower Manhattan in May 2001 (see May 2001). After May, Schippers continues to get increasingly precise information about this attack from FBI agents in Chicago and Minnesota, and around July he renews efforts to pass the warning to politicians. He will claim, “I tried to see if I could get a Congressman to go to bat for me and at least bring these people [to Washington] and listen to them. I sent them information and nobody cared. It was always, ‘We’ll get back to you,’ ‘We’ll get back to you,’ ‘We’ll get back to you.’” At the same time he is attempting to pass on this warning, he will claim he is also attempting to pass on the work of reporter Jayna Davis and her theory that Middle Easterners were involved in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), and also Wright’s claim that Hamas operatives were operating freely inside the US (see February-March 2001). The three claims put together seem to lead to a bad response; Schippers later comments, “People thought I was crazy.” Around July 15, he attempts to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft. Conservative activist “Phyllis Schlafly finally apparently made some calls. She called me one day and said, ‘I’ve talked to John Ashcroft, and he’ll call you tomorrow.’” The next day, one of Ashcroft’s underlings in the Justice Department calls him back and says, “We don’t start our investigations with the Attorney General. Let me look into this, and I’ll have somebody get back to you right away.” Schippers will say he never did hear back from anyone in the Justice Department. Perhaps coincidentally, on July 26 it will be reported that Ashcroft has stopped flying commercial aircraft due to an unnamed threat (see July 26, 2001). In late August, his FBI agent sources again confirm that an al-Qaeda attack on lower Manhattan is imminent. (Metcalf 10/21/2001; Patterson 5/18/2002; Ahmed 2004, pp. 258-260) In 2003, Wright will say, “In 2000 and in 2001, [Schippers] contacted several US congressmen well before the September 11th attacks. Unfortunately, these congressmen failed to follow through with Mr. Schippers’ request that they investigate my concerns.” It is not clear if Wright was one of the Chicago FBI agents that Schippers claims gave warnings about a Manhattan attack, or if Wright is only referring to Wright’s investigation into funding for Hamas and other groups that Schippers was also warning politicians about (see February-March 2001). (Federal News Service 6/2/2003)

A hotel owner in Oklahoma City will later say that he sees Zacarias Moussaoui, Mohamed Atta, and Marwan Alshehhi together on or around this day. He will claim they come to his hotel late at night and ask for a room, but end up staying elsewhere. At the time, Moussaoui is living 28 miles away in Norman, Oklahoma (see February 23-June 2001). However, even though the US government will later struggle to find evidence directly connecting Moussaoui to any of the 9/11 hijackers, this account will not be cited by any US government officials or prosecutors. An article will later suggest this may be because of numerous reports and eyewitnesses claiming Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols stayed at the same hotel with a group of Middle Easterners in the weeks before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). By highlighting this encounter, it might draw renewed attention to controversial Oklahoma City bombing theories. Atta and Alshehhi briefly visited an Oklahoma flight school in July 2000 (see July 2-3, 2000), before Moussaoui arrived in the US. On April 1, 2001, 9/11 hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi received a speeding ticket in Oklahoma (see April 1, 2001), but there have been no sightings of him with Moussaoui. (Crogan 8/2/2002)
Link to Oklahoma City Bombing? - Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson will say of this meeting: “One of the things that’s evident right now in connection with this investigation, the motel in Oklahoma City where the April bombing against the Murrah building was planned and executed from, that same hotel figures in two of the 9/11 hijackers and Zacarias Moussaoui, who’s currently in jail. Those three guys tried to check into that motel. And there is another fellow in Oklahoma City that links them to the April bombing against the Murrah building.… I have spoken to the owner of the motel. After the 9/11 attack, he called the FBI. The FBI came out and interviewed him, as he identified Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, and Zacarias Moussaoui. They came in. They said, ‘We’re looking for a room.’ He said: ‘I don’t have any room. What do you need it for?’ They said, ‘We’re going for flight training.’” (O'Reilly Factor 5/7/2002)
Intriguingly Similar Sightings Nearby - Years later, a 2002 FBI document will be made public that reveals several employees at a flight school in Bethany, Oklahoma, saw Atta, Alshehhi, and hijacker Waleed Alshehri flying small aircraft several times from early 2001 until August 2001. Additionally, Moussaoui was said to use the same airport, although there will be no mentioned sightings of him with the others. Bethany is about five miles from Highway 40, which is where the hotel mentioned above is near. Additionally, the hotel is about 28 miles from Norman, Oklahoma (where Moussaoui is living) and Bethany is about 33 miles from Norman (see Early 2001-August 2001). (Federal Bureau of Investigation 4/19/2002)

The CIA officers who draft a presidential daily briefing (PDB) item given to George Bush on August 6 (see August 6, 2001) ask an FBI agent for additional information and also to review a draft of the memo, but she does not provide all the additional information she could. The 9/11 Commission will refer to the FBI agent as “Jen M,” so she is presumably Jennifer Maitner, an agent with the Osama bin Laden unit at FBI headquarters. The purpose of the memo is to communicate to the president the intelligence community’s view that the threat of attacks by bin Laden is both current and serious. But Maitner fails to add some important information that she has: around the end of July, she was informed of the Phoenix memo, which suggests that an inordinate number of bin Laden-related Arabs are taking flying lessons in the US (see July 10, 2001). She does not link this to the portion of the memo discussing aircraft hijackings. Responsibility for dealing with the Phoenix memo is formally transferred to her on August 7, when she reads the full text. The finished PDB item discusses the possibility bin Laden operatives may hijack an airliner and says that there are “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings.” It is unclear whether the draft PDB item Maitner reviews contains this information. However, if it does, it apparently does not inspire her to take any significant action on the memo before 9/11, such as contacting the agents in Phoenix to notify them of the preparations for hijackings (see July 27, 2001 and after). The PDB will contain an error, saying that the FBI was conducting 70 full field investigations of bin Laden-related individuals (see August 6, 2001), but this error is added after Maitner reviews the draft, so she does not have the opportunity to remove it. (9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 260-2, 535; US Department of Justice 11/2004, pp. 69-77 pdf file)

President Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on August 6, 2001. Advisors wait with classified briefings.President Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on August 6, 2001. Advisors wait with classified briefings. [Source: White House]President Bush receives a classified presidential daily briefing (PDB) at his Crawford, Texas ranch indicating that Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. The PDB provided to him is entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” The entire briefing focuses on the possibility of terrorist attacks inside the US. (Sanger 5/15/2002; Hirsh and Isikoff 5/27/2002) The analysts who drafted the briefing will say that they drafted it on the CIA’s initiative (see July 13, 2004), whereas in 2004 Bush will state that he requested a briefing on the topic due to threats relating to a conference in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, where Western intelligence agencies believed Osama bin Laden was involved in a plot to crash an airplane into a building to kill Bush and other leaders (see April 13, 2004). The analysts will later explain that they saw it as an opportunity to convey that the threat of an al-Qaeda attack in the US was both current and serious. (9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 260) The existence of this briefing is kept secret, until it is leaked in May 2002, causing a storm of controversy (see May 15, 2002). While National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will claim the memo is only one and a half pages long, other accounts state it is 11 1/2 pages instead of the usual two or three. (Sanger 5/15/2002; Hirsh and Isikoff 5/27/2002; Schrom 10/1/2002) A page and a half of the contents will be released on April 10, 2004; this reportedly is the full content of the briefing. (Pincus and Eggen 4/10/2004) The briefing, as released, states as follows (note that the spelling of certain words are corrected and links have been added):
bullet Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US (see December 1, 1998). Bin Laden implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America” (see May 26, 1998).
bullet After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a -REDACTED-service (see December 21, 1998).
bullet An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told -REDACTED- service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.
bullet The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself (see December 14, 1999), but that bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaida encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaida was planning his own US attack (see Late March-Early April 2001 and May 30, 2001).
bullet Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation.
bullet Although bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998) demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveyed our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993 (see Late 1993-Late 1994), and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.
bullet Al-Qaeda members—including some who are US citizens—have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks (see January 25, 2001). Two al-Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were US citizens (see September 15, 1998), and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s (see November 1989 and September 10, 1998).
bullet A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks (see October-November 1998).
bullet “We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [REDACTED] service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of ‘Blind Sheikh’ Omar Abdul-Rahman and other US-held extremists” (see 1998, December 4, 1998, and May 23, 2001). (9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 223) According to the Washington Post, this information came from a British service. (Woodward and Eggen 5/18/2002)
bullet Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York (see May 30, 2001).
bullet The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the US that it considers bin Laden-related (see August 6, 2001). CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives (see May 16-17, 2001). (9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 223)
In retrospect, the briefing is remarkable for the many warnings that apparently are not included (see for instance, from the summer of 2001 prior to August alone: May 2001, June 2001, June 12, 2001, June 19, 2001, Late Summer 2001, July 2001, July 16, 2001, Late July 2001, Late July 2001, Summer 2001, June 30-July 1, 2001, July 10, 2001, and Early August 2001). According to one account, after the PDB has been given to him, Bush tells the CIA briefer, “You’ve covered your ass now” (see August 6, 2001). Incredibly, the New York Times later reports that after being given the briefing, Bush “[breaks] off from work early and [spends] most of the day fishing.” (Rich 5/25/2002) In 2002 and again in 2004, National Security Adviser Rice will incorrectly claim under oath that the briefing only contained historical information from 1998 and before (see May 16, 2002 and April 8, 2004).

Zacarias Moussaoui after his arrest.Zacarias Moussaoui after his arrest. [Source: FBI]After being warned that Zacarias Moussaoui has raised suspicions at flight school (see August 11-15, 2001 and August 13-15, 2001), the FBI learns they can arrest him because he is in the US illegally. Four agents, Harry Samit, John Weess, Dave Rapp (all FBI) and Steve Nordmann (INS), drive to the Residence Inn, where Moussaoui and his associate Hussein al-Attas are staying. At the hotel Samit speaks on the phone to Joe Manarang from FBI headquarters; Manarang appeals for them to take the “cautious route” and not arrest Moussaoui. However, Samit refuses, as he has already notified the hotel clerk of their interest. Moussaoui is arrested around 4:00 p.m. on an immigration violation. At first Moussaoui shows the agents some documents, but then he becomes upset at missing his flight training. The FBI confiscates his belongings, including a computer laptop, but Moussaoui refuses permission for the belongings to be searched. A search of Moussaoui’s person yields a dagger with a two-inch blade, and another knife with a three-inch blade belonging to Moussoaui is found in the car. He also has boxing gloves and shin guards, and the arresting agents note he has prepared “through physical training for violent confrontation.” Al-Attas allows the agents to search his belongings and they believe al-Attas is in the US legally, so he is not arrested. However, al-Attas tells the FBI that Moussaoui is a radical religious Muslim and later makes several statements indicating Moussaoui may be a terrorist (see August 16, 2001). (MSNBC 12/11/2001; US Congress 10/17/2002; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division 3/9/2006; Gordon 6/4/2006) Al-Attas is arrested the next day (see August 17, 2001).

When Zacarias Moussaoui is arrested (see August 16, 2001), he has a receipt on him for a Kinko’s store where he used a computer on August 12. The FBI does not go to this Kinko’s store to collect information about Moussaoui immediately after the arrest, but only on September 19, after the rest of Moussaoui’s belongings have been searched (see September 11, 2001). The FBI is told that the computers have been wiped and no information about Moussaoui’s use can be obtained. Due to the frequency with which Kinko’s computers are wiped, if the FBI visited the Kinko’s store immediately after the arrest, it is possible information about Moussaoui could have been recovered. Although the FBI is initially aware of some of Moussaoui’s e-mail addresses, in summer 2002 Moussaoui will reveal additional addresses he used and say he used them from this Kinko’s outlet. Although the Kinko’s computers have been wiped by 9/11, Microsoft, which operates the Hotmail service Moussaoui uses, can recover information up to 90 days after an account is last used, so the FBI could get the information it seeks from Microsoft until Mid-November 2001 (see (Late July-Early August, 2002)). However, the FBI does not know about the additional accounts at this point, partly because it was prevented from interviewing Moussaoui after 9/11 (see September 11-12, 2001). (US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division 1/1/2003)

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