Responsibility For The September 11 Attacks - Assigning Responsibility

Assigning Responsibility

For several months after the 9/11 attacks, no one, nor any group, claimed responsibility for the attacks, so the primary responsibility fell solely upon the hijackers, all of whom were killed and all of whom left no message or any claim of responsibility behind at explaining why they had carried the attacks out. As the media covered the 9/11 attacks unfolding, many quickly speculated that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks. On the day of the attacks, the National Security Agency intercepted communications that pointed to Osama bin Laden, as did German intelligence agencies. This helped rule out other immediate suspects, such as Croatian nationalists, who had bombed Grand Central Terminal on September 11, 1976.

Authorities in the United States and Britain also obtained electronic intercepts, including telephone conversations and electronic bank transfers, which indicate that Mohammed Atef, a bin Laden deputy, was a key figure in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. Intercepts were also obtained that revealed conversations that took place days before September 11 between bin Laden and an associate in Pakistan. In those conversations, the two referred to "an incident that would take place in America on, or around, September 11" and they discussed potential repercussions. In another conversation with an associate in Afghanistan, bin Laden discussed the "scale and effects of a forthcoming operation." These conversations did not specifically mention the World Trade Center or Pentagon, or other specifics.

The investigators were quickly able to link the 19 men to the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, also by accessing material in their intelligence agency files. The New York Times reported on September 12 that: "Authorities said they had also identified accomplices in several cities who had helped plan and execute Tuesday’s attacks. Officials said they knew who these people were and important biographical details about many of them. They prepared biographies of each identified member of the hijack teams, and began tracing the recent movements of the men." FBI agents in Florida investigating the hijackers quickly "descended on flight schools, neighborhoods and restaurants in pursuit of leads." At one flight school, "students said investigators were there within hours of Tuesday’s attacks." The Washington Post later reported that "In the hours after Tuesday’s bombings, investigators searched their files on al-Suqami and al-Ghamdi, noted the pair’s ties to al-Marabh and launched a hunt for him."

Based on the evidence, authorities in the United States quickly asserted that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization were solely responsible for the attacks, and other suspects were ruled out. The Government of the United Kingdom reached the same conclusion. Although he denied the attacks at first, Osama bin Laden had since claimed full responsibility.

Author Laurie Mylroie writing in the conservative political magazine The American Spectator in 2006 argued that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his family are the primary architects of 9/11 and similar attacks, and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's association with Osama bin Laden is secondary and that Al-Qaeda's claim of responsibility for the attack is after the fact and opportunistic. In an opposing point of view, former CIA officer Robert Baer, writing in Time magazine in 2007, asserted that George W. Bush Administration's publicizing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's claims of responsibility for 9/11 and numerous other acts was a mendacious attempt to claim that all of the significant actors in 9/11 had been caught.