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Sound advice. Thank you for being here tonight even though not much progress has been made. Happy New Year. See you tomorrow.
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Could Sept. 11 Have Been Worse?
By HREFHTTPABCNEWS.GO.COMSECTIONSWORLDNEWSTONIGHTTHOMAS_PIERRE_BIO.HTMLPIERRE THOMAS THE ABCNEWS INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
Nov. 6
Several suspected al Qaeda terrorists who tried unsuccessfully to enter the country around the same time as the Sept. 11 hijackers may have been part of a plan to launch other attacks on targets in the United States, ABCNEWS has learned.
Some U.S. investigators believe that if the men had been able to get in, al Qaeda organizers might have used them for an even broader attack on Sept. 11, 2001, that would have involved six or seven planes rather than the four that were ultimately used. Other investigators suspect the men were to be part of a separate, second wave of attacks.
"Our assumption at the White House at the time was that there were more attacks planned," said Roger Cressey, the former director for counterterrorism for the National Security Council. "Maybe not on 9/11 but certainly afterward. [Osama] bin Laden and his people think strategically."
The identities of the new al Qaeda suspects were discovered after U.S. officials compared visa applications received in the months before Sept. 11 with names recovered from documents seized in caves in Afghanistan.
Some of the suspected terrorists have been killed or captured overseas. One man who was traveling to the United States with one of the suspected would-be hijackers is still unaccounted for and intelligence officials are worried he could be in the country.
A recently declassified top secret government report used in the Zacarias Moussaoui case states that "as late as August 2001 al Qaeda was still trying to insert new hijackers into the September 11th attacks."
This theory supports alleged statements from suspected al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has been cooperating with authorities since his arrest in Pakistan in March. Mohammed told interrogators that bin Laden originally wanted as many 10 passenger jets involved in the attacks, including five originating from Los Angeles and San Francisco to attack California's tallest buildings. Bin Laden reportedly scaled back that first plan, made in 1996, because it was getting too complicated.
Replacement Hijacker?
There is growing evidence al Qaeda was routinely floating operatives in and out of the United States before Sept. 11, 2001.
The FBI has identified a Saudi national who was picked by al Qaeda leader Ramsi Binalshibh to replace him as a hijacker after Binalshibh's visa applications were repeatedly denied, ABCNEWS has learned. The man came to the United States, but left just before Sept. 11 for reasons unknown. He was reportedly traveling with yet another man who is unaccounted for. There is no record that he left the country, so intelligence officials are worried he could still be in the country.
I will.