The September 11 attacks, often shortened to 9/11, were a series of suicide attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against civilian and government targets in the United States on September 11, 2001. The attackers hijacked four commercial planes, flying the first two into the World Trade Center in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, while the last plane (which was intended to hit the White House) crashed into a field in Pennsylvania due to a passenger revolt. The attacks caused a total of 2,996 deaths including the 19 hijackers. Following the attacks, the U.S. Congress severely limited civil liberties and launched an NSA campaign of mass surveillance through the PATRIOT Act. The U.S. military began invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan even though most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia,[1] and on May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden (founder and General Emir of al-Qaeda) himself was discovered and killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Background
During Operation Cyclone, the USA funded Islamic extremists in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union and PDPA. These mujahideen groups later became al-Qaeda, which the USA backed against Yugoslavia and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.[1]
World Trade Center
The first plane hit the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. [2]
Pentagon
American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m.[2]
Flight 93
Flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. after passengers took over the plane.[2]
Alleged U.S. government involvement
George Bush only authorized shooting down hijacked planes at 10:00 a.m., after three of the four planes had already crashed.[2]
In April 2023, a released court document (a declaration by an Office for Military Commissions investigator into 9/11) revealed that two of the hijackers were CIA recruits in training[3] who had lived in California with the FBI informant Abdussattar Shaikh in the summer of 2000.[4] While direct involvement from the CIA during the attack is difficult to establish, the document does note the CIA had lost track of their recruits in the US after giving them a visa allowing multiple entries, shortly after which the attacks happened. The CIA also prevented the FBI from investigating these two recruits and charging them.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Aaron Good, Ben Howard, Peter Dale Scott (2021-09-11). "The Twenty Year Shadow of 9/11: U.S. Complicity in the Terror Spectacle and the Urgent Need to End It" CovertAction Magazine. Archived from the original on 2022-11-21. Retrieved 2022-12-24.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Jeremy Kuzmarov (2022-01-22). "Newly Declassified Documents Reveal that President George W. Bush Authorized Shootdown of Hijacked Airplanes on 9/11—But Only After Three Planes Had Already Crashed" CovertAction Magazine. Archived from the original on 2023-06-03.
- ↑ Kit Klarenberg (2023-04-18). "Bombshell filing: 9/11 hijackers were CIA recruits" The Grayzone.
- ↑ Joshua Shoenfeld (2023-05-13). "Former DEA Agent Details How the CIA Concealed Identity of Two 9/11 Hijackers Granted Visas to the U.S. From the FBI" CovertAction Magazine. Archived from the original on 2023-05-13.