Al-Zawahiri’s Tapes, Air Security – Updates to the 9/11 Timeline as of February 15, 2010

Most of the entries published over the last couple of weeks are about video and audio messages released by al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. We have a call for jihad in Somalia from January 2007, a request for media questions from December of that year, and a call for revenge for Israeli attacks in Gaza the following March. This was followed by his answers to the questions in two parts, the last of which was a platform for him to claim the rumors Israel was behind 9/11 were planted by the nefarious mullahs of Tehran. There are also 2008 tapes marking the anniversary of the Six-Day War, in English, and accusing the US and Iran of working together, as well as an audio recording from last year about a visit by President Barack Obama to Egypt.

In the field of air security, we have a 1991 suicide plot to crash planes into buildings in Madrid, a 1992 FAA memo warning that small knives were used in hijackings, and a series of NEADS briefings about terrorists crashing planes into buildings.

There is also more about drone strikes in Pakistan in 2009. Thirty people were killed on February 14, another ten on April 29, and dozens more during a funeral on June 23.

Miscellaneous entries cover Richard Myers’ appointment as NORAD commander in 1998, the CIA’s initial decision not to prosecute John Kiriakou, who underestimated the number of times Abu Zubaida was waterboarded by 118, and some analysis of the voice of a man thought to be Osama bin Laden.

Originally posted here.