The 9/11 Files: They Could Have Stopped It | Ep 3

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, reveals how the Bush and Clinton administrations repeatedly failed to act on Al-Qaeda. Despite multiple clear warnings, they slashed counterterrorism funding and called off numerous chances to take out Bin Laden—decisions that led directly to 9/11. Paid partnerships with: Beam: Get up to 40% off the entire store during our Prime Day sale. Visit https://ShopBeam.com/Tucker and use code PATRIOT40. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Tucker Carlson?

  The Bush administration did everything it possibly could to undermine an actual investigation into what happened on September 11th. But why? What were they trying to hide?

• 0:40Speaker 02

  There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says, "Fool me once, shame on...

• 0:49Speaker 02

  shame on you."

• 0:53Speaker 02

  "If you fooled me, we can't get fooled again."

• 0:55Tucker Carlson?

  Well, for one thing, the United States had incredible intelligence on Bin Laden and his plans. Precise intelligence, actionable intelligence. On August 6, 2001, President Bush received a presidential daily briefing. Its title, literally, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." It continued, "Al Qaeda members, including some who are U.S. citizens, have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks." And then it added this, "FBI information indicates patterns of suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijacking." Bin Laden was mentioned no fewer than 40 times in the president's daily intelligence briefing. CIA Director George Tenet said

• 1:39Tucker Carlson?

  that in the summer of 2001, "The system was blinking red." So how far-fetched was it that Al Qaeda might hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings? Not very far-fetched, it turns out. In May 2001, an intelligence report concluded this, "Operatives may hijack airplanes." The FAA issued a circular to airlines warning of heightened increase in hijackings. And then in July of 2001, the FAA issued another circular, this one noting that, quote, "Currently active terror groups were known to plan and train for hijackings and were able to build and conceal explosives and luggage."

• 2:19Tucker Carlson?

  Between 1999 and 2001, NORAD, which defends North American airspace, simulated a foreign hijacked airliner crashing into a building in the United States as part of a training exercise. And they were not alone. The National Reconnaissance Office, a little-known intelligence agency that runs our spy satellites and remote-controlled surveillance planes, was planning an exercise in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. That exercise was on September 11, 2001, and planned to take place just a couple of miles from Dulles Airport. That's where the American Airlines Flight Number 77 had taken off before it crashed into the Pentagon. In other words, the idea of Al Qaeda hijacking an airplane and flying into a building was

• 3:03Tucker Carlson?

  entirely plausible before 9/11. Officials knew it could happen, and there were other signs as well. During the presidential transition in 2000 and 2001, nine months before 9/11, Bill Clinton told President Bush, "I think by far your greatest threat is Bin Laden and Al Qaeda." In January of 2001, Philip Zelico, the future executive director of the 9/11 Commission, attended a briefing in which Condoleezza Rice, the future national security adviser, was warned by Sandy Berger, that would be Bill Clinton's outgoing national security adviser, that, quote, "The biggest national security threat facing this country is Al Qaeda." On July 10, 2001, the CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism deputy, Jay

• 3:47Tucker Carlson?

  Kofor Black, were so alarmed by intelligence pointing to an impending attack by Al Qaeda that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Condoleezza Rice and her Security Council staff. In fact, on the morning of the attacks, Director of Central Intelligence Tenet told a US senator, quote, "I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training." And of course it did. By any measure, including according to the heavily biased Commission report... George W. Bush, and particularly Condoleezza Rice, had ample warning that Al Qaeda was plotting an attack. And by all accounts, the US intel agencies were fully aware the hijackers were in the United States, and in fact, had helped at least two of them get to the United States.

• 4:30Tucker Carlson?

  The US intelligence was so strong at the time, on the morning of the attacks, the majority of the hijackers were flagged at the airport for additional screening. The question is, how did they wind up on the watch list in the first place? The report never tells us.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  My name is Mike Shoyer. I worked at the CIA for 22 years. And from 1995 until 1999, I was chief of the Osama bin Laden unit. I would say it was 1983 to 1992, I worked on Afghanistan. I worked on the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Bin Laden was a popular name during the war against the Soviets. We knew he was fighting in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen. He was the poster boy for jihad in Saudi Arabia, so he was well-known throughout the Arab world.

• 5:25Tucker Carlson?

  Osama bin Laden was born in 1957 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, into a well-connected and wealthy family. He was one of 50 siblings. His father built a multi-billion dollar construction business, reconstructing, among other things, the cities of Mecca and Medina. In 1979, Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet invasion there. After the war, he returned to Saudi Arabia, but he was eventually exiled to Sudan because he was openly critical of the Saudi government's close ties to the United States. In 1996, he returned to Afghanistan and declared war on the US.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  In 1996, bin Laden announced what he said was his declaration of war against the United States. And it's a very compelling document to this day because it doesn't have anything to do with what the American people were told about either Islam or Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  The basis of the declaration of war from him was, "Get out of our land." That was a compelling message within a Middle Eastern framework that had been dominated by the United States government and the Israelis since the end of World War II.

• 6:39Tucker Carlson?

  Since then, the United States has been repeatedly attacked in the region.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  Now, the fanatics behind this bomb have given the French soldiers and their American counterparts 10 days to leave Lebanon or die.

• 6:50Tucker Carlson?

  In 1983, a group called Islamic Jihad murdered more than 300 US Marines at a military barracks in Beirut. At the time, it was the largest non-nuclear explosion since Nagasaki.

• 7:01Speaker 05

  The four-story concrete building collapsed in a pile of rubble. More than 200 of the sleeping men were killed in that one hideous, insane attack.

• 7:09Tucker Carlson?

  In 1993, a Pakistani national called Ramzi Youssef bombed the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.

• 7:15Speaker 06

  The key question now, was this a one-off attack or the start of a campaign of bombing?

• 7:21Tucker Carlson?

  By 1996, Al Qaeda had emerged as the single clearest threat to the United States. In response to that threat, the CIA created something called Alec Station, otherwise known as the Bin Laden Unit, which Mike Shoyer ran. But as it turned out, not everyone at the CIA wanted to help fight Al Qaeda.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  We wanted some basic information about Osama bin Laden. His bank accounts, his health information, his educational information. Very basic things. We kept sending a message because it was important. We were building a base of data.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  And so the COS in Saudi Arabia at the time, John Brennan, we didn't know if he was dealing with them on the issue or not. And so we finally sent a message that said, didn't say, "Pretty please," but said, "Please do this as quickly as possible." He called Tenet.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  That was the end of that. Don't send Brennan any more of these notes. So, whatever the reason was, I don't know. But, you know, if you identify a liaison service who you know has information you need, it's not impossible to persuade them to do it, since we defend Saudi Arabia, especially in that case. We were told not to send any more cables on that issue to Riyadh. Just because I was the chief of operations on Osama bin Laden didn't mean there wasn't somebody else working on the same issue in an opposite direction. And, as it turned out, the opposite direction carried the day, with the approval of presidents.

• 9:03Tucker Carlson?

  As Brennan was withholding critical information on bin Laden, the CIA's counterterrorism center started developing a plan to capture bin Laden at a terrorist training facility known as Tarnak Farms.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Tarnak Farms is where he lived. We knew Osama bin Laden, his family, Zawahiri's family,

• 9:25Speaker 03

  and a couple of other of the most senior Al Qaeda people were going to be there. And initially, the administration went along with it.

• 9:33Tucker Carlson?

  The plan was finalized with the help of friendly Afghan tribal leaders. It was even rehearsed twice in the United States in late 1997. All it needed was approval from the White House. On March 7, 1998, Richard Clark, who headed the Interagency Counterterrorism Security Group, described the plan as "embryonic" to then-national security adviser Sandy Berger, even as the CIA was conducting its third rehearsal of the action. Military officers in the Pentagon reviewed the plan, and despite some mild misgivings that could have been attributed to interdepartmental rivalries, they generally expressed their satisfaction. They supported it. Legal justifications were prepared in advance from the CIA to the NSC for approval. The Attorney General of the United States, the FBI Director, and the US Attorney for

• 10:18Tucker Carlson?

  the Southern District of New York, where bin Laden was to be tried if he was captured alive, were all briefed on the plan. The CIA ran a fourth rehearsal between May 20 and May 24, with the expectation that the plan would be executed in late June of that year and no later than late July. And yet, less than a week later, the CIA's assets in the field were informed that the operation had been suspended by the Clinton administration.

• 10:44Tucker Carlson?

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• 11:27Tucker Carlson?

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• 12:09Tucker Carlson?

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• 12:18Speaker 03

  When we wrote the operational plan, you have to keep in mind, speaking to the policymaker, you have to keep in mind that they have their families there. And if there is violence, if they don't surrender, there's liable to be people killed, noncombatants. They said, "Okay, we'll go ahead with it."

• 12:44Speaker 03

  So that one went almost to the starting gate. And the last, or one of the last dumps of overhead imagery we got happened to show a child swing set. And they suddenly said, oh, we can't do that. What if that picture gets out and we, you know, we'll be responsible.

• 13:03Tucker Carlson?

  A clear pattern emerged throughout Shoyer's tenure at Alex Station. Whenever there was a chance to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, the Clinton administration chose not to do it.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  We had an operation that was planned to kidnap bin Laden within Afghanistan.

• 13:19Tucker Carlson?

  The plan was supposed to unfold just days before Al Qaeda bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  It was a plan that required getting him out of the country and then taking him to another country. And it was approved. And then it was at a last minute, it was unapproved. And then a week later, the embassies went up.

• 13:41Speaker 07

  The greatest fear tonight is that what has happened here will herald some alarming new phase in international terrorism.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  About four o'clock in the morning, George Tennant, who was the DCI at the time, calls my office number and I pick it up and said, yep, Shoyer. I said, yeah. And somebody else put him on. And he said, can we revive that program? The president wants to know if we can revive the program on the capture operation. By Tennant's words, realized they missed an opportunity perhaps to stop the operation. But that got to be a habit throughout the rest of my career there.

• 14:21Tucker Carlson?

  Less than two weeks after the attacks, Clinton launched cruise missiles at targets he said were associated with bin Laden.

• 14:27Speaker 08

  Today I ordered our armed forces to strike at terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan. Our mission was clear, to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama bin Laden.

• 14:42Tucker Carlson?

  But the strike was worthless. In fact, it was embarrassing. The Pentagon targeted suspected terrorist training facilities in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which US intelligence falsely claimed was making chemical weapons. The pattern became clearer over time. The CIA would offer a way to capture or kill bin Laden, and then somebody would call off the strike at the last moment.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  To me, it's a mystery. To me, going after Osama bin Laden was hard work.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  But it could have been accomplished by 97. And then from 97 till I left in 99, there were 10 more opportunities. And none of them were taken advantage. Kill, capture, whatever the government wanted to do.

• 15:22Tucker Carlson?

  And the chances kept coming. In May of 1999, US intelligence services had a credible lead that Bin Laden was at his compound near Kandahar, Afghanistan. Officials in both the US military and the CIA agreed this was the best opportunity they could hope for to kill Bin Laden. They had at least three opportunities to strike, but they never did.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Somebody got wet feet?

• 15:43Tucker Carlson?

  Schoyer was removed from his role running Alex Station in 1999. He was replaced with a figure called Richard Bleh, who barely comes up in the 9/11 Commission Report. On October 12th, 2000, the failure to act in Bin Laden caught up to the agency and with our country when the USS Cole, a destroyer anchored in Aden, Yemen, was attacked by a suicide bomber.

• 16:05Speaker 09

  Killed 17 soldiers on the USS Cole.

• 16:08Tucker Carlson?

  17 American servicemen died. But this time, the government didn't strike anyone or anything in retaliation. The official reason given by the report for the lack of action was that the administration lacked definitive proof that Al Qaeda was responsible for the terror attack.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  We knew right away it was Osama Bin Laden. And then I hear Clinton on the radio or on the television saying, "Well, my experts, my team, my intelligence community says we can't be sure if it's Osama Bin Laden or not, or Al Qaeda or not." And we just stood there and said, "No, what do we see what he's talking about?"

• 16:48Tucker Carlson?

  In this case, the 9/11 Commission offers excuses for Clinton, citing an absurd blame game with Clinton administration officials who claimed they were waiting for the legal go-ahead from the CIA and the FBI. But at the same time, then-CIA Director George Tenen is reported to have said that he was surprised to hear the White House was awaiting a conclusion from him on responsibility for the Cole attack. Everyone already knew who did it.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  My impression over the course of my career, after over 22 years, is that... The first thing the seventh floor ever considered when you brought them in operation to approve was what if we fail and how will we get roasted by the media?

• 17:27Tucker Carlson?

  It took Bill Clinton just 13 days to respond to the embassy bombings, but for some reason, a reason that has never been explained, he had no response at all to the attack on the USS Cole. Even more bizarre and telling is the Bush administration's explanation for why it didn't respond. It was most clearly articulated by the neocon number two at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz. He described the Cole bombing as stale by the time Bush took office. It was just five months after the terror attacks. Wolfowitz wanted something bigger to respond to, and soon, he got it.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  It was remarkable to watch this, especially after the man had declared war on us, reiterated it, said your time is coming. We hadn't had a friend like that in terms of divulging what their true mission was since General Giapp, and we didn't listen to him and look where it got us. And look where we are now. Not only 9/11, but the whole, we lost another war to the Afghans.

• 18:27Tucker Carlson?

  If you want to understand why and how 9/11 happened, the years to look at most closely are 1999 to 2001. Those years coincided with George Tenet's implementation of what became known simply as "The Plan." To formulate this effort, CIA Director Tenet elevated a man called Cofer Black, a former spy who'd risen to head CIA stations in the Sudan and elsewhere, to Director of the Counterterrorism Center. To give you an idea of Cofer Black's character, in 2017, he joined Hunter Biden on the Board of Directors of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company. But at that time, in late 1999, the core of the future 9/11 hijackers were gathering in Afghanistan.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  These 22 individuals do not account for all the terrorist activity in the world, but they're among the most dangerous: the leaders and key supporters, the planners and strategists.

• 19:21Tucker Carlson?

  They must be found. Here's a summary of some of the warnings they had. In December 1999, a 23-year-old Algerian man called Ahmed Rassam attempted to cross with a rental car on the ferry from Victoria, British Columbia to Port Angeles, Washington State. Thanks to alert border security in Port Angeles, Rassam was apprehended with hundreds of pounds of explosives in his car. His plan had been to set off a car bomb at LAX on January 1, 2000. But the biggest warning signs of an impending attack in the United States came in the summer of 2001, just months or weeks before. On April 20, 2001, a briefing to top Bush administration officials noted that Bin Laden planned multiple operations.

• 20:06Tucker Carlson?

  In May 2001, a report was distributed to Bush administration officials noting that Bin Laden public profile may presage attack. On May 16, 2001, an intel report mentioned a phone call to an embassy that Bin Laden supporters were planning an attack inside the United States. On June 12, a CIA report indicated that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was recruiting people to travel to the US, possibly to aid in terror attacks. On June 22 of that year, the CIA notified station chiefs about intelligence suggesting an Al Qaeda suicide bombing in the United States could be on the way. At about the same time, US intelligence issued a terror advisory threat

• 20:48Tucker Carlson?

  indicating a high probability of near-term spectacular terrorist attacks resulting in numerous casualties. On June 25, George W. Bush's counterterrorism czar Richard Clark told Condoleezza Rice that six intelligence reports showed Al Qaeda personnel warning of an impending terror attack. Three days later, he told Rice that something very, very, very, very big was about to happen.

• 21:14Tucker Carlson?

  On June 30th, top U.S. intel officials were warned Bin Laden planning high-profile attacks of catastrophic proportion. In July, intelligence reports of an impending attack reached a fever pitch that led to the closure of U.S. embassies in the Middle East. None of this apparently got the attention of the White House. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the man who thought the coal bombing was “stale,” questioned the reporting in a conversation with Bush’s deputy national security adviser. On July 12, 2001, Acting FBI Director Thomas Picard opened Attorney General John Ashcroft’s intelligence briefing with the latest on the CIA warnings about an Al Qaeda attack.

• 21:57Tucker Carlson?

  Ashcroft responded by saying, “I don’t want you to ever talk to me about Al Qaeda, about these threats. I don’t want to hear about Al Qaeda anymore.” Picard appealed for more counterterrorism enhancements, meaning funding, an appeal the Attorney General denied. On September 10th, the United States was attacked the very next day.

• 22:24Tucker Carlson?

  By lying to the American public serially and aggressively, the CIA, the Bush administration, and the 9/11 Commission created the perfect condition for conspiracy theories to thrive. Consider, for example, the established fact that in the days before the attack, there was a huge surge in put options against airline stocks. Who beside Al Qaeda knew the attacks were coming? And who specifically profited from these trades? It seems possible, probably likely, that foreign governments, including supposed allies, knew the plot was coming. Why didn’t they warn the United States? And why did U.S. authorities rush to ship all the debris from the attacks abroad, almost immediately, making it impossible for engineers to study the crime scene?

• 23:09Tucker Carlson?

  Those are just some of the questions we will address in the next installment of our series.