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The 9-11 Commission Report
- Final Report of the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,
Official Government Edition
The
Full Report
(2.3 MB, 585 pages)
has been made available in its entirety, as a
single PDF file. In response to comments from
the community, GPO has refined the Full Report
as an improved, interactive, user-friendly PDF,
optimized for screen-viewing. GPO has also
decreased the file size to a mere 2.3 MB. The
report is also available as a collection of
smaller PDFs arranged in a browse table based on
the Final Report's table of contents. An
Executive Summary
(344 KB, 35 pages) of the Final Report is also
available.
...A
Shock, Not a Surprise
The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should
not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists
had given plenty of warning that they meant to
kill Americans indiscriminately and in large
numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would
not emerge as a signal threat until the late
1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew
over the decade.
In February 1993, a group led
by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World
Trade Center with a truck bomb.They killed six
and wounded a thou-sand. Plans by Omar Abdel
Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and
Lincoln tunnels and other New York City
landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were
arrested. In October 1993, Somali tribesmen shot
down U.S. helicopters, killing 18 and wounding
73 in an incident that came to be known as
"Black Hawk down."Years later it would be
learned that those Somali tribes-men had
received help from al Qaeda.
In early 1995, police in
Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow
up a dozen U.S. airliners while they were flying
over the Pacific. In November 1995, a car bomb
exploded outside the office of the U.S. program
manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh,
killing five Americans and two others. In June
1996, a truck bomb demolished the Khobar Towers
apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia,
killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding
hundreds.The attack was carried out primarily by
Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had
received help from the government of Iran.
Until 1997, the U.S.
intelligence community viewed Bin Ladin as a
financier of terrorism, not as a terrorist
leader. In February 1998, Usama Bin Ladin and
four others issued a self-styled fatwa, publicly
declaring that it was God’s decree that every
Muslim should try his utmost to kill any
American, military or civilian, anywhere in the
world, because of American "occupation" of
Islam’s holy places and aggression against
Muslims.
In August 1998, Bin Ladin’s
group, al Qaeda, carried out near-simultaneous
truck bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in
Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.The
attacks killed 224 people,including 12
Americans,and wounded thousands more.
In December 1999, Jordanian
police foiled a plot to bomb hotels and other
sites frequented by American tourists, and a
U.S. Customs agent arrested Ahmed Ressam at the
U.S. Canadian border as he was smuggling in
explosives intended for an attack on Los Angeles
International Airport.
In October 2000, an al Qaeda
team in Aden,Yemen, used a motorboat filled with
explosives to blow a hole in the side of a
destroyer, the USS Cole, almost sinking
the vessel and killing 17 American sailors.
The 9/11 attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon were far more
elaborate, precise, and destructive than any of
these earlier assaults. But by September 2001,
the executive branch of the U.S. government, the
Congress, the news media, and the American
public had received clear warning that Islamist
terrorists meant to kill Americans in high
numbers.... |
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September11news.com -The Day Our World Changed
This is an excellent site by Tony Williams documenting and archiving the
history with print and photos of this day to remember.
Shattered
A remarkable collection of photographs of the World Trade Center
disaster by James Nachtwey for TIME
Terror Hits Home
Images of the destruction of the World Trade Center
War.US
War.US is a non-partisan, pro-military, grass-roots organization.
The September 11 Digital Archive
uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history
of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, Virginia, and
Pennsylvania and the public responses to them.
American Citizens Killed or Injured by Palestinian Terrorists September
1993-July 2002 -
Israel’s War on Terrorism Is America’s War on Terrorism
RECOVERY
With lingering disbelief and uncertainty, a nation
works to rebuild its way of life
INVESTIGATION
From Boston to Germany, a massive
search for the terrorists
RETALIATION
As U.S. recovers from attack, the world awaits a response
The Flag is Still There
Around the country Americans rally to show their spirit and support
LEGISLATION
RELATED TO THE ATTACK OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
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