Cover Up [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Within hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001,1 began an investigation into the intelligence failures leading up to the day that w^ould become known forever as 9/11. Almost two years later, the first phase of my work culminated in the publication of 1000 Years for Revenge: International Terrorism and the FBI—The Untold Story. The central finding of the book was that Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the original World Trade Center bomber, had set the 9/11 plot in motion in the Philippines as early as 1994. Along with his uncle BChalid Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef had targeted six buildings on both U.S. coasts, including the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, CIA headquarters, the Sears and Transamerica Towers, and a nuclear facility. Furthermore, as demonstrated by evidence I obtained from the Philippines National Police official who unearthed the plot, by 1995 there were as many as ten Islamic radicals training in U.S. flight schools. Finally, my investigation proved that the PNP had given this evidence to the U.S. Embassy in Manila—and that it had been received by the FBI. And yet, after Yousef and two of his cohorts were captured, a Bureau agent allowed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to escape. A year later, while Yousef and two other two al Qaeda operatives were being tried in New York for the Manila air bombing plot they called "Bojinka," Khalid Shaikh Mohammed went on to perfect the hijacked-airliners suicide plot that his nephew Yousef had set in motion in 1994—the plot that became 9/11. But as I discovered in my investigation, the FBI and the Justice Department had failed to follow up on the Philippines evidence, and the hunt for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed himself was shrouded in secrecy.^ The question was, why?