The CIRAGram

September 2021 (Issue 4/2021)

From Your Editors

This issue is dedicated to the 20^thanniversary of 9/11. All of the CIRA Members’ memories have been approved by the Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB).

9/11 Remembered

Excerpts from the Unclassified Version of Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet’s Testimony before the Joint Inquiry into Terrorist Attacks Against the United States, 18 June 2002

 Before Director Mueller and I focus on the 9/11 plot, as you’ve asked us to do Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin with some remarks on the context in which the attacks occurred. There are two key points:

First, we had followed Bin Laden (UBL) for many years and had no doubt that he intended a major attack.

Second, the eighteen months prior to 9/11 were a period of intense CIA/FBI efforts to thwart dramatically heightened UBL operational activity.

We first locked onto Bin Laden in the period from 1991 to 1996 when he was in Sudan. During those years, he was principally a financier of terrorist attacks and our efforts against him competed with other deadly threats, such as those posed by Hizbollah – which at that point was responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other terrorist organization.

Bin Laden jumped right to the top of our list with his move to Afghanistan in 1996 and his drive to build the sanctuary that subsequently enabled his most spectacular attacks. This focus resulted in the establishment within CTC of a Bin Laden-dedicated Issue Station staffed by CIA, FBI, DOD, and NSA officers. Bin Laden showed his hand clearly that year when he said that the June bombing of Khobar towers marked the beginning of the war between Muslims and the United States.

Two years later, he issued a fatwa stating that all Muslims have a religious duty “to kill Americans and their allies, both civilian and military worldwide.” He then attacked our East African embassies in 1998 and said that an attack in the US was his highest priority. We took this as his unequivocal declaration of war, and we in turn declared war on him, inaugurating an intensive period of counterterrorist activity that filled the months running up to 9/11.

There were three broad phases in that struggle before 9/11 and I want to set the stage for the 9/11 plot by telling you about them:

First, the pre-Millennium Period in late 1999. UBL operatives planned a series of attacks against US and allied targets designed to exploit the millennium celebrations planned around the world. CIA and FBI worked closely and successfully to defeat these terrorist plans. We acquired information that enabled us to break up a large terrorist cell in Jordan that had been planning to blow up the Radisson Hotel, holy sites, and Israeli tour buses, and that had plans to use chemical weapons. The arrest of Ahmad Ressam coming across the Canadian border into the US was the single most compelling piece of evidence we had that UBL was intending to strike at us in the United States. During this period, we identified numerous terrorist suspects around the world and carried out disruption activities against more than half of these individuals including arrests, renditions, detentions, and interrogations.

Second, the Ramadan Period. In November and December 2000, we had an increase in Ramadan-related threat reporting. Working with a number of foreign governments, we were able to successfully preempt attacks including a planned attack against US interests. Overall, these operations disrupted several al-Qa’ida plans and captured hundreds of pounds of explosives, as well as weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles. You will recall that the attack on the USS Cole had just occurred in October 2000, a serious defeat.

And finally, the Pre-9/11 Period. Starting in the spring and continuing through the summer of 2001 we saw a significant increase in the level of threat reporting. Again, working with the FBI and foreign liaison services, we thwarted attacks against US facilities and persons in Europe and in the Middle East.

Thus, even before September 2001, we knew that we faced a foe that is committed, resilient and has operational depth. The Intelligence Community was already at war with al-Qaida.

CIRA Members’ Memories of 9/11

 Alex Goodale

Like many Americans of my generation, 9/11 is as indelibly engraved in my memory as the assassination of JFK in November 1963. At the time, I was serving at CIA Headquarters as Chief of Strategic Planning under the legendary Charlie Allen, then the Assistant DCI for Collection. Charlie had been on al-Qaida’s (AQ) and Usama bin Laden’s (UBL) trail since late 1998, after the twin embassy bombings in Africa. It was his and our office’s highest priority. He held Intelligence Community (IC) meetings on AQ every day at 9 AM, after our 8 AM office senior leadership meeting, to review and focus ongoing collection efforts. Based upon all indications, the IC had strategic warning of a major attack against the US, and had so informed President Bush, but we lacked critical, actionable intelligence to thwart it, despite our best efforts.

The evening before 9/11, Charlie advised the senior leadership team that our regular 8 AM meeting on the 11^th was postponed to 8:45, as he was hosting a breakfast meeting with Navy Commander (CDR) Kirk Lippold, skipper of the USS Cole when it was nearly sunk by AQ in October 2000. At 8:40, Charlie emerged from his office with CDR Lippold, who he introduced to those of us waiting outside for the leadership meeting. Charlie thanked CDR Lippold for his insightful comments, which Charlie took very seriously, and bade him farewell.

The leadership team filed into Charlie’s office and took our places around the small conference table, with Charlie’s back to his desk and wall-mounted TV monitor (tuned to CNN) and me to his left at the end of the table, where I could see the TV. Charlie commenced the meeting by saying that, before we got down to our regular business, he wanted to briefly inform us about the breakfast meeting with CDR Lippold. In particular, he was struck by CDR Lippold’s final comments, which he recounted as follows: “I fear that the American people, our government, and perhaps even you, Charlie, have not learned the real lesson from the attack on the USS Cole, as the next attack will be far worse, on our homeland.”

Just after Charlie uttered those words, something caught my attention on the TV behind Charlie: a huge burst of flame as a plane smashed into one of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers. I immediately exclaimed, “Oh, my God!” Charlie turned around to see the TV, and also exclaimed, “Oh, my God!”—but added “He’s done it!,” referring to UBL. I noted that it might have been an accident, as a B-25 bomber had crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945, but Charlie repeated, “No, I know he’s done it.” He then asked his special assistant to get ahold of CDR Lippold ASAP, as he would like to have another word with him before he departed CIA. We attempted to proceed with our meeting, until a second plane attacked the other WTC tower at 9:03—and we immediately adjourned.

As we came out of Charlie’s office, CDR Lippold returned. Charlie thanked him for coming back and said: “Your words have proven all too prescient, because it has happened. We are under attack and at war. Now, we must all go about our duties.” Everyone shook hands again, wished each other God speed, and went about our duties. When the evacuation was announced, Charlie stayed with two key aides, while the rest of us evacuated. As for CDR Lippold, he was assigned at that time to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, which AQ attacked with a third plane at 9:37 AM. I have often wondered whether he viewed that attack en route from Langley to the Pentagon, but the breakfast meeting with Charlie ensured that he didn’t have to personally endure a second AQ attack in less than a year.

James A. Graybill

9/11 Remembrance: Too Close for Some, Just Another Day for Others

We were having breakfast at our hotel in Palo Alto when the news flashed across the TV screen about the incidents of that morning that shocked the nation. There were three of us on a scanning trip to the Ronald Reagan library to capture the classified information in their vault and bring it back for review and possible release. We had to front end that trip with a stop at Stanford University to capture    a small set of classified material that included some Casey material from his days as DCI, as well as some of his OSS material. The real shock for the three of us was that we had been booked on the aircraft that hit the Pentagon, and would have been on that flight had we not done a pre-survey at Stanford which determined we needed more time there in order to meet our start date at the Reagan Library. We took the same flight a week earlier. As a former Office of Communications officer who had experienced coups, riots and all sorts of hazardous situations it was – “OK, we just dodged another bullet” – just another day. For my two companions who had no experience with this sort of close encounter, it was too close for comfort. It was a very quiet day at work–and one remembered each year for many reasons.

Monelle Holshey

The September day dawned in spectacular fashion—blue sky, brilliant sunshine—giving no hint of the life-changing events to come. I was in my office in the DO/Human Resources Staff (HRS), when I heard colleagues talking about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center North Tower in New York City at 8:46am. I thought “Oh my, how sad.” As the Branch Chiefs were gathered in C/HRS’ office for our daily morning meeting, we heard on his television that a second plane had crashed into the South Tower at 9:03am. We all reacted the same way: “we are under attack.” At 9:37am, a third plane crashed into the Pentagon.

We quickly dispersed back to our offices, and I met with my two Program Chiefs responsible for the Professional Trainee (PT) and Clandestine Service Trainee (CST) Programs, long-term training and interim service programs designed to prepare new hires for a career in the Clandestine Service. They each contacted their trainees who were serving interims at HQS, and I contacted the two training facilities where PTs and CSTs were in courses.

Later that morning, we learned of the plane that had crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03am. We knew there had been reporting that CIA Headquarters was a target. So, what did I do? I went around the HRS offices and lowered/closed the blinds. Really? Like that was going to stop a plane? Irrational, I know, but I had to do something because I felt so helpless.

Except for officers working in the CounterTerrorism Center (CTC), all HQS staff was dismissed. I remember walking out to my car a little before 11am thinking “this can’t be real.” As soon as I got home, I called my parents who were relieved to hear from me as they were watching news coverage of the events. I too turned on the television and began watching non-stop. By late evening, my sense of helplessness turned into a burning sense of anger and outrage.

Two days later, like many of my colleagues, my name was on the volunteer list to transfer to CTC. That weekend, I received a call from the chief of the unit tracking Usama bin Ladin. We had served together previously. Within an hour, I was in his office, as he was describing how he basically needed a Special Assistant, given the volume of cable and email traffic he was receiving. I worked for him until late December, when he left to set up the CIA presence in Kabul.

Nancy Galyean 

On September 11^th, 2001, I was working as a linguist and media specialist at Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS, later Open Source Center) headquarters in Reston, Virginia. My colleagues and I were sent home around ten o’clock. While waiting for the logjam of cars to exit the parking lot, I saw two fighter planes overhead, noteworthy in the absence of any other aircraft in the normally busy approach to Dulles Airport.

After I got home, I logged on to my unclassified FBIS Internet account. Anticipating a surge of material, I sent an e-mail to the editors at Austria Bureau (AU), offering to edit translations in AU’s queues. AU’s translations came from uncleared, mainly foreign nationals, who worked as radio and television monitors and translators of press and Internet sources. In addition to editing for clarity and checking for occasional mistakes, AU editors and FBIS staff officers served as a final check before releasing (wirefiling) the translations into the US Government data streams, including the military and diplomatic wire systems. With authorization from FBIS management, I had often edited from home in the evenings and on weekends, especially during the wars in the Balkans in the mid-late 1990s, so the process was routine. Many of the items I filed on 9/11 had reached the queues before the attacks, but by mid-afternoon I began to file priority items about the attacks from the evening and night-time broadcasts.

Late in the afternoon, FBIS Europe Division’s chief analyst sent me an e-mail message asking me to return to the office to write media reaction reports. I drove back and started going through the traffic–including some translations I had edited– and put together a report. Security officers interrupted us several times to evacuate the building, going outside as far as the picnic area–apparently because of possible threats. Outside, it was a pleasantly comfortable September evening, seemingly at odds with our somber reflections and uncertainty about what would happen next. I went home around midnight.

Editing/filing translations and writing the media reaction report were small contributions to the Agency’s response on 9/11. In retrospect, what is interesting is that I could work from home on unclassified data that could be relevant to analyses and might corroborate other intelligence material. I think this was unusual in the Intelligence Community twenty years ago. Fortunately, FBIS had established the procedures and computer systems before the crisis occurred.

Linda Biggs

A Footnote to a Calamitous Day

On 9/12/2001 at 2:30am, I departed CIA Headquarters/Counterterrorism Center for home.  My route included the George Washington Parkway to the Beltway, traveling south to the Annandale Road off ramp.  During the Beltway portion, my car and a USPS truck were the ‘only’ motor vehicles on the road, thus, providing an eerie sensation.

John A. Rizzo’s 9/11 Account

Former CIA Acting General Counsel John A. Rizzo (RIP – see his obituary below) provided a compelling account of 9/11, both in his memoir, “Company Man” and in a 2015 PBS ‘Frontline’ interview, from which the following is drawn:

…I was sitting in my office on that Tuesday morning, a beautiful fall morning, both in New York and in Washington… And I heard the news. And I believe most people in the agency, even in the Counterterrorism Center, first heard the news by watching their TVs in their office. That’s how I heard…I remember looking out my windows. There are floor-to-ceiling windows on the top floor of the CIA complex. And first of all, looking across the courtyard … to the adjacent CIA building. And looking at a lot of my colleagues, CIA officers, staring back at me through their windows. Some of them looking skyward. It was striking.

A mass evacuation was called for inside CIA…around 10:30 that morning. And honestly, the reason I stayed was that I looked out from my vantage point, I could see the CIA parking lots and the roads leading out of CIA, which of course is a fenced facility, and they were all clogged. … It was absolute gridlock inside the CIA complex. So honestly, that was the reason I stayed. Because I knew I couldn’t get out anyway.

…I’d been through many, many CIA controversies and crises in my then-25-year career. I had acquired a sense, over the years, of what was going to be a crisis and what was more of a political event, so to speak…I knew sitting there that morning, trying to process what had just happened, that this was unlike not just anything I had ever encountered in my career, but anything the agency has ever encountered. Because the agency failed to deter and also even know in advance about these massive coordinated attacks on the homeland.

As I was sitting there in my office, I tried to focus on what was next for CIA. … I knew, for instance, there would be a massive investigation into this catastrophic intelligence failure by CIA and FBI and the entire national security community. So, I knew that was coming. But I also knew that the CIA would be not just asked, but ordered by the President and by the American people and the Congress to take unprecedented steps to ensure that there would not be a second attack on the homeland. Sitting there, as a lawyer, I took out a yellow pad and tried to sketch out some of the unprecedented actions that we could be told to undertake and what those would entail. Sitting there, trying to focus on this most terrible of days, I scribbled down words: “Capture, detain and interrogate terrorists.”…And as I wrote those words, I did not know at that point how CIA was going to exactly carry out these kinds of activities, but I knew it was something in the wake of 9/11 that it was inevitable that we would be directed to do…The day after 9/11, that’s really where the CIA paramilitary swung into action into Afghanistan. I mean, the day after. That’s when the notion of, if CIA were going to carry out a program to capture and interrogate terrorists to elicit information about any second attack, how would we do that?

About CIA in Afghanistan (cia.org)

In the aftermath of the tragic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush ordered Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to launch operations against the al-Qa’ida terrorist organization and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan.  This order called for the CIA to collect real-time, actionable intelligence to help shape the battlefield and to use all means to target al-Qa’ida.  Within 15 days of the attacks on US soil, the first team of CIA officers was on the ground and operating in Afghanistan–some 8,000 miles from home.

This rapid deployment was possible because the CIA had developed and nurtured relationships with the Afghan Northern Alliance for several years prior to 9/11.  Because of this thorough, low-key, and persistent effort, CIA officers knew the language, the history, and the culture of the region and were in position to move quickly against the terrorists. In addition to being “first on the ground,” in October 2001, the CIA team was able to quickly amass an enormous body of information and a large stable of assets to launch rapid and robust efforts against the Taliban.

As the weeks unfolded, a core group of more than 100 CIA officers–primarily operations and paramilitary officers as well as officers from the Directorate of Support, all highly experienced leaders known for their independence, skill, initiative, and bravery–worked with some 300 US Special Forces personnel and partnered with local tribal and military forces.  Team members took risks and worked with key groups in the area, doing whatever was necessary to accomplish the mission.

All-source intelligence enhanced the operations. The networks of sources that the CIA had developed in Afghanistan over the previous two decades provided critical information on the enemy’s capabilities, plans, intentions, and motivations.  The overall success of military operations in those first few months is well-documented.  Aided by superior firepower and backed every step of the way by a dedicated team of intelligence professionals, the United States and allied forces made significant strides in those early months.  Outside Afghanistan, CIA teams with officers representing all Agency directorates supported officers in the field.

The combined efforts of the US Intelligence Community, the US military, Afghan allies, and coalition partners led to swift success.  By early December 2001–in less than three months–the Taliban regime had been overthrown, a significant number of the al-Qa’ida leadership had been killed or captured, and a major terrorist safe haven had been eliminated.  Through it all, the CIA’s integrated intelligence collection, communications, technology, logistics, and delegated leadership were invaluable to the campaign.A New Book on bin Laden:The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, by Peter Bergen“The 20th anniversary of 9/11 is a good occasion for a detailed political biography of the architect of these attacks…The portrait he draws is intimate and detailed….”
—Washington Post, Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern studies, Princeton University. 

Remembering 9/11–CIA Honors 20^thAnniversary of 9/11

(Emailed to CIA annuitants on 9/11/2021. If you did not receive this email directly, please write to annuitants@ucia.gov to be added to the Annuitants’ Mailing List.)

CIA Alumni, 

Earlier today, on the 20^th anniversary of the devastating attacks of September 11^th, Director Burns and officers from across the Agency gathered in front of CIA’s 9/11 memorial to reflect on the tragedy of that day, and to remember and honor those lost.

“For many of us,” Director Burns said, “that clear September morning is vivid. We remember where we were when we first saw the image of smoke billowing from the Twin Towers. We think of the shock when we saw the second plane strike and then heard that the Pentagon had been hit. We recall the anxiety we felt, not knowing whether another attack was imminent.” And while many of our officers remember the events of 9/11 with vivid clarity, the Director noted that a growing number of our incoming workforce were too young on that day to fully process what had occurred. “We gather here today because collectively – as members of this Agency family and as citizens of this great nation – we must remember.”

“By taking the time to stand in this place at this moment,” he said, with the memorial’s 9,000-pound, steel World Trade Center beam standing poignantly behind him, “we show one another that September 11^th is not merely another increasingly distant day in our history.” Director Burns concluded his remarks at 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane struck the North Tower, and then he led attendees in a moment of silent reflection. Wherever you’re reading this, we invite you to pause – as a member of our Agency family – in your own moment of quiet reflection.

Sincerely,Tammy ThorpDirector, CIA Office of Public Affairs