The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden Read online

  Praise for THE ELEVENTH DAY

  “Retells [the] events with unbridled drama … a broad-shouldered look at the deceit, destruction, and disaster that followed … What caused all this [Muslim distrust of the United States]—the ill-will and the deception—is outlined in The Eleventh Day.… The book also raises uncomfortable but unavoidable questions about Saudi financial support for [al] Qaeda and sets out how the 9/11 Commission was, in turn, misled and chose to overlook important evidence.… September 11 isn’t over.”

  —Boston Sunday Globe

  “The book’s essential contribution to the annals of the attack is its painstaking examination of questions the 9/11 Commission finessed.… Did Saudi princes, charities or the military fund bin Laden and his hijackers, help them after they reached the U.S., and withhold intelligence that might have thwarted the attack?”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “Comprehensive … In the course of their meticulous re-creation of events, [the authors] arrive at the conclusion that massive government failures at all levels permitted the plot to succeed.”

  —The Providence Journal

  “From its heart-rending preface to its disquieting final chapter, The Eleventh Day is a staggering exposé. It should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand Osama bin Laden, the terrorist plot of 9/11 and their effects on American life.”

  —The Post and Courier

  (Charleston, South Carolina)

  “A powerful book and, it seems to me, the definitive account of 9/11—a fascinating narrative of the lead-up to the horrific event and its complex aftermath. As well as putting a human face to all the people involved—victims and adversaries—it fills in the omissions (many of them deliberate) in the official version of events.”

  —PAUL THEROUX

  “It is a measure of the respect that I have for this book that I have revised my opinion on several issues based on the evidence provided by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. The Eleventh Day strikes me as belonging on the top shelf of the 9/11 books, right up there with The Looming Tower and Perfect Soldiers.”

  —Screw​Loose​Change.​blogspot.​com

  “The Eleventh Day is a game-changer. It is the new definitive timeline for 9/11, a superb and detailed extension of the work of the 9/11 Commission and Congress’s Joint Inquiry. Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan’s research and reporting are peerless in their depth, breadth, and accuracy. Together, this experienced team has cleared the air of suspect research and speculation, an invaluable service to future researchers and historians.”

  —MILES KARA, professional staff,

  Congress’s Joint Inquiry and the 9/11 Commission

  “Decent and inquisitive … We are in Summers and Swan’s debt.”

  —The Spectator (London)

  “The Eleventh Day confronts what the West refused to face in the years that followed 9/11…. The motivation for the attacks was ‘ducked’ even by the official 9/11 report.… [The Commission’s] two most senior officials, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, were later to explain: ‘… Commissioners who argued that al Qaeda was motivated by a religious ideology—and not by opposition to American policies—rejected mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.…’ In other words, we still haven’t been told the truth about the crime which—we are supposed to believe—‘changed the world forever.’ ”

  —The Independent (London)

  “Worthy analytical focus … The Eleventh Day succeeds in making the reader realize that vital questions remain unanswered.… Did the 9/11 hijackers have support networks in the U.S.? What roles might Saudi officials have played in supporting al Qaeda? Why was no one in the U.S. government prosecuted or fired for gross negligence?”

  —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

  “Engaging, interesting … easy to absorb … solidly referenced … adds context and depth to the understanding of the events on that day that shaped the world in the decade that followed.”

  —The Courier-Mail (Brisbane)

  “The definitive book on 9/11. The Eleventh Day is a house of answers regarding those pesky and unsolved questions surrounding September 11, 2001.”

  —JEAN SASSON,

  coauthor of Growing Up bin Laden

  “Writing with astonishing detail, Summers and Swan … follow the story into the highest levels of the Bush administration.… A terrific feat of intense, old-style journalism, brimming with thoroughly sourced detail, … that reads at times like a thriller. For a comprehensive one-volume retrospective account of 9/11 and its aftermath, this book will be hard to beat for some time to come.”

  —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “Magnificent—and scary.”

  —ANDREW NEIL

  of the BBC’s This Week

  “Superb … The Eleventh Day, by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, [is] a wholly absorbing and powerful narrative full of good sense, properly weighed facts and clear understanding.”

  —Daily Mail (London)

  “Compelling … gripping … cogent, forthright journalism and impressive research … Most of all, The Eleventh Day is a damning portrayal of U.S. incompetence and indifference that will leave the reader outraged.”

  —Irish Independent

  “A compelling (and often harrowing) read from start to finish … Summers and Swan stand out as champions of old-school journalism based on diligence and digging.”

  —Irish Examiner

  “Vivid … highly readable … opened my eyes.”

  —Daily Mail (London)

  A 2012 Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover and in slightly different form in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2011.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  David Corn: Excerpt from “When 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Go Bad.”

  Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Forbes: Excerpt from “There Is No Time, There Will Be Time” by Peggy Noonan (Forbes, November 30, 1998)

  Reprinted by permission of Forbes Media LLC © 2011.

  HarperCollins Publishers: Excerpt from At the Center of the Storm by George Tenet, copyright © 2007 by George Tenet; excerpts from Perfect Soldiers by Terry McDermott, copyright © 2005 by Terry McDermott.

  Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.: Excerpt from The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 by John Farmer, copyright © 2009 by John Farmer.

  Reprinted by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  St. Martin’s Press and Liza Dawson Associates: Excerpts from Growing Up bin Laden by Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, copyright © 2009 by The Sasson Corporation. Rights outside of North America are controlled by Liza Dawson Associates. Reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press and Liza Dawson Associates.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53125-4

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  Cover design: Misa Erder

  Cover photograph: Benjamin Thompson/

  Flickr/Getty Images


  v3.1

  “I don’t believe for a minute that we got everything right.

  We wrote a first draft of history.”

  —LEE HAMILTON,

  vice chairman, 9/11 Commission

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  AUTHORS’ NOTE

  PREFACE

  PART I ATTACK

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  PART II DISTRUST AND DECEIT

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  PART III AMERICA RESPONDS

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  PART IV PLOTTERS

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  PART V PERPETRATORS

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  PART VI TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  PART VII UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  AFTERWORD

  Photo Insert

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  AUTHORS’ NOTE

  OVER THE YEARS, THE EVENT TO WHICH THE WORLD GAVE THE BRIEF name “9/11” has burgeoned into a universe of facts and factoids. Our approach to the writing of this book was to build a chronology, which eventually ran to well over a thousand pages, to gather information from a multitude of sources, including published material in both paper and electronic form, and to conduct interviews of our own. We read as deeply as possible the many thousands of pages of staff reports, original memoranda, and other 9/11 Commission records that began to be released as of 2009.

  Additional information on numerous points can be found in the Notes and Sources section at the back of the book. These are linked to the text by page number.

  For ease of reading, we have adopted a single standard for Arabic names that are rendered differently in different texts. The name “bin Laden,” for example, can be found elsewhere as “bin Ladin” or even “ben Ladin,” and the organization associated with him as “al-Qaeda,” or “al Qida”—and more. We have stuck to “bin Laden” and “al Qaeda.”

  The full rendering of many Arab persons’ names is lengthy, and we have in many cases shortened them. After a full first mention, for example, “Khalid al Mihdhar” becomes just “Mihdhar.” We render “Ramzi bin al-Shibh,” as have many other texts, simply as “Binalshibh.” Though perhaps not strictly correct, or satisfactory to the purist, this makes for smoother reading.

  Our aim has been to make readable sense out of a kaleidoscopic story, to offer rational explanation where there has been confusion or unnecessary controversy, and to serve history as well as possible.

  A.S. R.S.

  May 2011

  PREFACE

  TEN YEARS ON, MEMORY AND LOSS. WHERE TWO WONDERS OF THE modern world once soared high over the city, two great cascades feed reflecting pools of shimmering water. The abyss into which it flows is now a hallowed place of remembrance. Pilgrims about to descend to the underworld, the underworld of what once was the World Trade Center, will pass a ribbon of names etched into parapets of bronze.

  They identify those killed in New York City on September 11, 2001: the 206 passengers and crew aboard the three planes that were used as missiles that day; the forty who died when a fourth airliner fell from the sky in Pennsylvania; the 2,605 office workers and visitors and would-be rescuers known to have died in and around the Trade Center; and the 125 men and women who died at the Pentagon in Washington. Included, too, are the names of the six people killed eight years earlier, in 1993, in the first attempt to bring down the towers with a truck bomb.

  The memorial names 2,982 men, women, and children as of the spring of 2011. The true tally of 9/11 fatalities, however, is incomplete. Some of those who labored in the rubble of the fallen towers have died since, agonizingly slowly, from respiratory disease contracted in the fire and poisoned dust of the place they called Ground Zero. Some nineteen thousand others are reported to be sick and receiving treatment. By one prediction, disease will eventually cripple and kill as many again—more perhaps—as died on the day of the attacks.

  We do not know, shall never know, how many have died in the far-off wars that followed the onslaught launched that September day. Fighting men aside, the vast majority of the dead have been civilians: unknown thousands—conservatively, many tens of thousands—of men, women, and children killed in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

  Of the three thousand who died on 9/11 itself, fewer than half have graves. Some bodies were consumed by fire, others reduced to minute fragments of mortality, morsels of burned bone, decaying flesh, a single tooth with a silver filling. To this day, forensic pathologists are confronted by a monstrous human jigsaw, one they know they will never complete.

  Consider five of the names that are etched, lettered in bronze, above the curtain of water at the 9/11 memorial.

  Jimmy Riches, a New York firefighter, died in the lobby of the North Tower. His father, James, himself a Fire Department battalion chief, recovered his son’s mangled body months later.

  Donald McIntyre, a Port Authority police officer, also died at the Trade Center. His handcuffs, recovered at the scene, were given by his widow to a colleague assigned to hunt down terrorists in Afghanistan.

  No identifiable remains were ever found for Eddie Dillard, an American Airlines passenger who died at the Pentagon. His widow, by odd happenstance, had been American’s base manager in Washington, D.C., when his plane took off that day.

  Ronald Breitweiser, a money manager, died in the South Tower of the Trade Center. Only his arms and hands were recovered, identified by fingerprints—and by his wedding ring, which his widow now wears.

  Only part of a leg and one foot were found—six years later—to account for Karen Martin, chief flight attendant on the plane that plunged into the North Tower. Attendant Martin was probably the first person harmed by the hijackers on 9/11.

  • • •

  SOMETHING ELSE WAS LOST that day, something precious that touches on the stories of all the thousands who have died. The Greek tragic dramatist Aeschylus, twenty-five centuries earlier, understood well what it was. “In war,” he wrote, “the first casualty is truth.”

  James Riches worked in the rubble for months, motivated in part by the hope of recovering his own son’s dead body. He labored, like thousands of others, buoyed by the assurance of the Environmental Protection Agency, that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe to breathe. Today, no longer a fire chief, Riches Sr.’s health is irreparably damaged, his lung capacity reduced by 30 percent.

  Like so many others, meanwhile, Riches wants vengeance against those who killed his son. The Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, said to have ordered the 9/11 attacks, became—in the West—a constant demon, a symbol of the dark forces of terror. President George W. Bush at first promised to get him “dead or alive,” only to backtrack months later and say, “I don’t know where bin Laden is … and really don’t care. It’s not that important.”

  In 2009, at the White House
, Riches and others met Bush’s successor, Barack Obama. “I pulled out Jimmy’s bracelet and funeral mass card and gave them to him,” the former fire chief said later. “I told him that I’m frustrated that I haven’t seen justice for my son Jimmy.… Please capture Osama bin Laden.” Obama promised “swift and certain justice.”

  Police officer McIntyre’s handcuffs, engraved “Mac,” were later snapped on to the wrists of a fugitive named Abu Zubaydah—a native of Saudi Arabia like bin Laden. Imprisoned ever since, Zubaydah remains today the subject of serious controversy. For U.S. interrogators treated him with extreme brutality, using duress that has been defined by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and many others, as torture.

  Eddie Dillard’s widow, Rosemary, for all her grief, was one of a number of bereaved family members incensed by the ill treatment of prisoners and by plans to try them before military tribunals. “The secret and unconstitutional nature of these proceedings,” they said, “deprives us of the right to know the full truth about what happened on 9/11.”

  Ronald Breitweiser’s widow, Kristen, for her part, has been one of the most articulate of those whose lives were devastated. She testified to a joint House-Senate inquiry and fought for a further, full, independent investigation. When that aspiration was realized—in the shape of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States—Breitweiser excoriated its failings. She believes that much is still hidden, and wants convincing explanations. The CIA, she points out, identified two of the hijackers as terrorists more than eighteen months before 9/11, learned they had visas to enter the United States, yet kept the information from U.S. law enforcement. Why?

  Though the final chapter of the congressional report into 9/11 is said to discuss Saudi financial links to the hijackers, all but one page of the chapter was kept secret on the orders of President Bush. Why? At a 2009 meeting with bereaved families, Breitweiser says, President Obama said he was willing to declassify the suppressed material. As of this writing, two years later, the chapter remains classified. Why?