August 22nd 2001 John O’Neill, considered the FBI’s leading authority on Al Qaeda, resigns from the FBI. He says it is because of repeated obstruction of his investigations into Al Qaeda. Following his resignation he is offered a job as the head of security for the World Trade Centre. On September 10th he moves into his new office on the 34th floor of the North Tower. 9/11 Connections: Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime
Saudi is the spiritual birth-place of Al Qaeda. Frank Gardner’s Return to Saudi Arabia, BBC 2013
Douglas Farah, an exceptionally talented Washington Post reporter, then uncovered an al-Qaeda network involved in the West African diamond trade. Micha Glenny, McMafia
Prohibition is also a godsend to terrorist networks. Organisations like the Taliban and al-Qaeda fund their activities through the narcotics trade. ibid.
I have not suggested there is a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Dick Cheney, news interview
In September 2013, al-Shabab and al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups from Somalia attacked a shopping mall in neighbouring Kenya. More than a hundred security cameras recorded the attack which left 71 people dead. Terror at the Mall: This World, BBC 2014
They had killed sixty-one including a dozen children and three pregnant women. ibid.
He was the world’s most wanted man. And the CIA operation to track down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was one of America’s greatest intelligence coups. But do we know the whole story? This World: The Bin Laden Conspiracy, BBC 2015
Now a new and controversial account alleges Pakistan’s intelligence service was hiding Bin Laden for years. They just handed him over to the Americans. ibid.
Seymour Hersh says the whole US raid was staged. ibid.
He [bin Laden] and his family moved to a military garrison town. ibid.
Al Qaeda is revealed to be a government creation which has been used as tool of political control over the masses. The Corbett Report, 14 Al Qaeda Doesn’t Exist, James Corbett online 2007
In 1976 Salem bin Laden, Osama’s half brother, co-founded Arbusto Energy with George W Bush. The Corbett Report: The Osama Myth Exposed, James Corbett online 2012
In the weeks after 9/11 the Taliban offered to hand bin Laden over if the US provided proof he was connected to the attack. Bush turned the offer down. ibid.
There are competing narratives about what did or did not happen in May 2011 and before then in regards to the life or death of Osama bin Laden. The Corbett Report: When Did bin Laden Die? James Corbett online 2018
Not the first time that such a death had been announced but the ninth. ibid.
‘We believe that the biggest thieves in the world are Americans and the biggest terrorists on Earth are Americans.’ The Corbett Report: False Flags: The Secret History of Al Qaeda I: Origin Story, James Corbett online 2021, bin Laden
No part of the Muslim world could escape the influence of the British crown … British fingerprints can be found on every aspect of the story. ibid.
On Christmas Eve 1979 Soviet troops began an invasion of Afghanistan. ibid.
What bin Laden needed for his burgeoning terror group to thrive was not more money, it was protection. ibid.
In 2005 former British foreign secretary Robin Cook claimed that Al Qaeda was literally ‘The Database’, that is the computer file of the thousands of Mujahideen who were trained and recruited with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. ibid.
‘The US is 90% certain that bin Laden was responsible for today’s attack.’ The Corbett Report: False Flags: The Secret History of Al Qaeda II: 9/11, James Corbett online, US television news 5.54 p.m.
The popular conception of Al Qaeda that of a topdown organisation with a single leader overseeing its operations was a convenient fiction created by the FBI so they could prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the 1998 bombings of two embassies in East Africa. ibid.
‘The idea … that bin Laden ran a coherent organisation with operatives and cells all around the world of which you could be a member is a myth. There is no Al Qaeda organisation. There is no international network with a leader.’ ibid. Jason Burke, author The Power of Nightmares
Waged on fictitious ground against a shadowy enemy, the great military campaign of the twentieth century was not a war on terror at all, it was a war of terror. The Corbett Report: False Flags: The Secret History of Al Qaeda III
Its agents uncanny ability to cross borders illegally, evade capture repeatedly, and generally slip through intelligence agencies’ dragnets unimpeded. ibid.
There were no high-tech cave fortresses. No multi-tiered offices and bedrooms on the top, no secret exits on the side, no ventilation systems or computer systems … ibid.
Bin Laden was also reported dead on several occasion in the ensuing years. ibid.
The confusing confluence of lies, obfuscations, cover-ups and contradictions that surrounded the [bin Laden] raid. ibid.
Al Qaeda was now widely recognised as a convenient ally of the US in Syria. ibid.
Al Qaeda cells flourished in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and in Afghanistan the Taliban was tightening its grip. Breaking History: New Age of Terror I, History 2018
In 2009, Pierre and Yolande Korkie left South Africa with their two children to begin a new life doing charitable work. Captive VII: Al Qaeda Hostages, Yemen, caption, Netflix 2016
Yolande and Pierre did not know that their children had been returned safely to South Africa a week after the kidnap. ibid.
Yolande returned home to South Africa in 2014. ibid.
Later it emerged that Pierre and Luke had been moved just days before the American raid. ibid.
Six Al-Qaeda fighters were reportedly killed in the raid. Two of the tribal negotiators were later killed by Al-Qaeda who suspected they had cooperated with the Americans. ibid.
July 2000: The chief of the FBI’s counter-terrorism section Agent John O’Neill attends a meeting in Orlando, Florida. But he makes a grave error. He takes his eye off the ball. His briefcase is stolen: it contains top-secret documents. It’s a critical mistake. And carries fatal consequences for O’Neill and the preamble to 9/11. Because O’Neill is on to something. He is hot on the heels of Osama bin Laden. Alone Against Al Qaeda, PBS 2019
O’Neill’s private life begins to unravel. ibid.
His new job as security chief at the World Trade Centre. ibid.
9/11 still haunts us all. The events of that day have defined much of the world ever since. The hunt for Bin Laden drove the West to invade Afghanistan. Now they’ve left, a new reign of terror begins. Bin Laden: The Road to 9/11 I, Channel 4 2021
We know Bin Laden as the terrorist, the world’s most evil man. For those once close to him, this story is more complex. ibid.
When Bin Laden was 9, his father died in a plane crash, leaving a vast fortune. ibid.
In 1979 when Bin Laden was 21, the communist Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, a Muslim country. ibid.
It was six to eight months, I don’t remember, but he was living there like an normal Mujahideen fighter … And he had guts. ibid. early fighter
They wanted to take their struggle to the rest of the world … In May 1988 Bin Laden and other extremists began to sketch out a new organisation. ibid.
In August 1988 when Bin Laden was 30 he formally founded Al-Qaeda, ‘The Base’. ibid. caption
The Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan left the door open for the Taliban to seize control. Bin Laden: The Road to 9/11 II
‘At the time Sudan was led by an Islamic party. So it was natural that all of us went to Sudan; it became a destination for people like us back then.’ ibid. colleague of Osama
According to US intelligence analysts, Bin Laden was financing several training camps in Afghanistan and Sudan. ibid.
Bin Laden escaped from Sudan with his life but little else: he had lost his Saudi citizenship, his family and most importantly his fortune. But his conviction that America was the mortal enemy of Islam was undiminished. ibid.
Afghanistan 1997: Bin Laden is 39 years old. Bin Laden: The Road to 9/11 III
As Bin Laden’s operations ramp up, so did his level of threat against the United States. ibid.
On 23rd February 1998 Bin Laden publishes a fatwa calling for the killing of Americans accompanied by a chilling network interview. ibid.
On 7th October 2001 American special forces land in Afghanistan. ibid.
One week after 9/11 an FBI special agent interviewed a prisoner in a New York city jail. Immediately after the terrorist attacks, authorities placed the prisoner in twenty-four-hour lockdown; for a week he’d been in total isolation with no access to TV, radio or newspapers … ‘What he laid out was the attack as if he knew every detail. It was just kind of eerie’ … The prisoner was this man [Ali Mohamed]. He was Osama bin Laden’s spy in America. He worked for and betrayed three arms of the US government. Bin Laden’s Spy in America, National Geographic 2021
On September 26th 2001 a small team of CIA officers arrives in Afghanistan. They are the first American’s deployed in what will become a long war against Al Qaeda. Revealed: The Hunt for Bin Laden, History 2023
Driven by the potential costs of the failure to find bin Laden, intelligence officers accept greater personal risk in the intensifying hunt. ibid.
‘Our relationship with Pakistan was complicated.’ ibid. Obama
The Black Hawks have 169 miles to cover in a flight of about 90 minutes. ibid.
‘You are to hunt down Bin Laden and his lieutenants, and then when you kill Bin Laden you cut his head off …’ Spy Ops I: Operation Jawbreaker, Ops dude, Netflix 2023
They were having to carry it out inside of Pakistan, a sovereign nation where the US was not supposed to be, added an immense level of complexity to this. Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror V: Graveyard of Empires, Netflix 2021