Pakistan, Day of 9/11, Londonistan – Additions to the 9/11 Timeline as of June 22, 2008

Many of the new entries this week deal with Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf expressed his public support for the Taliban in May 2000, and the ISI then assisted an autumn offensive by the Taliban. After taking office, the Bush administration was slow to develop a new policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and only gave Pakistan vague warnings about its links with Osama bin Laden three months before 9/11. After the attacks, Richard Armitage made his disputed "stone age" comment, but the ISI secretly advised the Taliban to resist the US-led invasion. Due to international pressure, Pakistan arrested thousands of militants in early 2002, and then released them, and there were attacks on a church, some French people, and the US consulate in Karachi around this time.

On the day of 9/11, the FAA failed to contact United Airlines about transmissions from United 175, managers at Boston airport learned of missing planes from their airport around 9:00 a.m., and a Boston manager then requested the relevant flight manifests. The FAA contacted American Airlines about Flight 77 at around 9:02 a.m., and American Airlines then began the "lockout" procedure. United Airlines allegedly told Boston Center that Flight 175 was down around 9:06, suspected the second WTC crash was Flight 175, and began the "lockout" procedure for that flight after 9:20 a.m. There are also more entries about Condoleeza Rice, who did not accompany Bush to Florida and had trouble assembling her national security team.

In Londonistan, MI5 informer Abu Hamza, who was protected from tough questioning from French investigators by British police, openly called on his followers to attack aircraft over London, but the police were not excited. One of the people monitoring Abu Hamza was another informer called Reda Hassaine (click here for a summary of the category about him), who started working for MI5 in May 1999. An MI5 officer told Hassaine there was "nothing we can do" about terrorism in Algeria, although at that time MI5 was harboring a whole raft of Algerian terrorists, and Hassaine assisted in an attempt to recruit one of them. Hassaine learned of a link between the Londonistan-based militants and Osama bin Laden, but his cover was blown in April 2000. His career as an informer over, he realised MI5 did not give a "sh*t" about all the Islamist killers enjoying the freedom of London. Al-Qaeda was finally banned in Britain in March 2000, a mere two and a half years after the African embassy bombings.

Another group of entries concern Bill Clinton's authorization to the CIA to kill bin Laden. The CIA later said that it did not understand the authorization, and that it was confused by another memo with different language. It should be noted that not all Clinton's memos about operations against bin Laden contained authorization to kill him. After 9/11, CIA managers repeatedly and falsely claimed the authorization did not exist at all, but the 9/11 Commission learned about it from former Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger.

Berger first visited the National Archives to prepare for discussions with the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, but, when preparing for interviews with the 9/11 Commission, improperly removed his own notes on classified documents and then stole a document he thought could be used to damage him. He returned to the archives and stole more copies of the document, but the theft was detected and he admitted to the Archives that he had two copies of the document. News of the theft was leaked to the press shortly before the 9/11 Commission was due to report, although Berger received an extraordinary lenient sentence for his actions.

New entries are also being added to cover just some of the many, many video and audio messages al-Qaeda second-in-command al-Zawahiri, or a man resembling him, has released since 9/11. They cover: "anniversary" messages in 2004 and 2006; a 2005 message criticizing US influence in the Middle East; taunts over the failed January 2006 airstrike against him; the "surge"; and the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan.

Miscellaneous entries cover training for the mujaheddin provided by Britain's elite SAS unit, a claim by former UN head Kofi Annan that the Iraq war prevented the redevelopment of Afghanistan, and criticism of the CIA inspector general's report by George Tenet. Shortly after 9/11, Russia tried and failed to halt American expansion into central Asia, and the US defense budget soared. Finally, 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow was investigated for mishandling classified information, and thought 9/11 was the CIA's fault, so he can't have been all bad.

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