9/11 Investigaton
Lance was the first mainstream journalist to argue that the two attacks on the World Trade Center—the 1993 bombing and the attacks of 9/11—were linked via Ramzi Yousef. A Kuwaiti national trained in Wales, Yousef was Qaeda’s chief bomb maker. He is also the nephew of the terrorist the FBI calls “the 9/11 mastermind” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). Lance’s investigative work linking Yousef and al Qaeda master spy Ali Mohamed to the 9/11 attacks has been cited repeatedly in “The Complete 9/11 Timeline” compiled by the non-profit History Commons the respected compendium of open source 9/11 intelligence.
In August, 2003 Lance's 1000 Years for Revenge, a broad survey of Al-Qaida operations in the US prior to 9/11 was published by Harper Collins. The book presents evidence that the FBI missed dozens of opportunities to stop the attacks of September 11, dating back to 1989. Lance describes how an elusive al Qaeda mastermind defeated an entire American security system in "the greatest failure of intelligence since the Trojan Horse."
On September 2, 2003, CBS News Correspondent Dan Rather, broadcasting from Baghdad during the Iraq War, reviewed the evidence presented in 1000 Years for Revenge for two days in a row, devoting two 4-minute segments as the lead stories on The CBS Evening News With Dan Rather. On the first broadcast from Iraq, Rather said:
"One thing seems clear, had there not been the murderous attacks of 9/11 there probably would have been no war. Now a new book to be released tomorrow, 1000 Years For Revenge: International Terrorism and the FBI, contends that the FBI could have and should have the prevented the 9/11 attacks.
"(Lance) traces these lapses back to 1989 and an FBI surveillance of a group of Middle Eastern men at a Calverton, Long Island shooting range. Yet inexplicably they (the FBI) suddenly stopped watching after just one month."
Rather explains that the Calverton men became devoted followers of blind cleric Omar Abdel Rahman. Rahman brought in professional bomber Ramzi Yousef and the men began the plot the first World Trade Center bombing.The broadcast includes interviews with Lance, who states:
"Of the man photographed by the FBI in 1989 three were later convicted in the original World Trade Center bombing, one was convicted in the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, and one was convicted in The Day of Terror plot to blow up the bridges and tunnels around Manhattan.... It was absolutely possible for the FBI to have identified and stopped Yousef in the fall of '92 as he built the bomb. If they had stopped Ramzi Yousef in 1992, they would have stopped 9/11."
The FBI, Lance says in the report, could have stopped Yousef because they had an informant, Emad Salem, already in place. He was close enough to take a video, shown in the CBS Evening News broadcast, of a celebration that included several members of the original Calverton group and to hear whispers about bomb plot. But interoffice fighting at the FBI forced Salem to quit, leaving a chilling warning:
"The last thing Emad Salem said to Nancy Floyd, his (FBI) control agent, before he left: 'Don't call me when the bombs go off.'"
The next day, on September 3, 2003, Rather again led with coverage of 1000 Years for Revenge:
"Ramzi Yousef, the bomber responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had fled to the Philippines where police discovered his bomb factory. Yousef again escaped but his accomplice (Abdul Hakim Murad) was arrested and spilled the chilling plot to Philippines Police Colonel Rodolfo Mendoza.
Dan Rather than shows the Colonel, Mendoza, in a taped interview, talking to Lance:
Lance: "He (Abdul Hakim Murad) said that there was a plan at least to hijack planes and fly them into targets in the United States?"
Mendoza: "Yeah. Targets in the United States. CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia."
Lance: "And did he mention any other targets to you?"
Medoza: "Later, later he told me about the possibility of hitting the Pentagon. He told me also that there is an unidentified nuclear facility."
Rather reported that Mendoza also provided "one more piece of information," quoting Lance as saying, "He said there were 10 Islamic pilots, at that moment in 1995 in America training in U.S. flight schools." Colonel Mendoza, says Lance, gave that information to the U.S. Embassy, including information that Osama bin Laden was funding Ramzi Yousef's plots.
In 2004, Harper Collins published a follow-up book to 1000 Years for Revenge.
Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding About the War on Terror concludes that Al-Qaida showed signs of launching the impending 9/11 attacks in 1995, but were able to evade arrest by exploiting the poor relations between the FBI and CIA and problems within their respective infrastructures.
Another follow-on book, Triple Cross:How bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI--and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him, published in September, 2006, covers the Al Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed. A review of the book by Rory O'Connor in The Guardian states: "In the annals of espionage, few men have moved in and out of the deep black world between the hunters and the hunted with as much audacity as Ali Mohamed...The FBI allowed the chief spy for al-Qaida to operate right under their noses...They let him plan the bombings of the embassies in Africa right under their noses. Two hundred twenty-four people were killed and more than 4,000 wounded because of their negligence."
The publisher's summary for Triple Cross states:
This is the story of the most dangerous triple-agent in US history. Peter Lance, author of the highly acclaimed 1000 Years for Revenge and Cover Up, returns to uncover the story of Ali Mohamed, a trusted security advisor of Osama bin Laden who hoodwinked the United States for more than a decade. As Lance reveals for this first time, this one man served in a series of high-security position within the United States security establishment, as a Special Forces advisor, FBI informant, and CIA operative, while simultaneously helping orchestrate the al Qaeda campaign of terror that led to 9/11. In October 2000, after tricking three U.S. intelligence agencies for almost two decades, Ali Mohamed appeared in handcuffs and a blue prison jumpsuit in a Federal District courtroom on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where he pleaded guilty five times. His crimes included brokering terror summits, financing an attack on two Black Hawk helicopters, training jihadis in improvised bomb building and the creation of secret cells. And yet, for decades Mohamed had lived the life of a Silicon Valley computer executive. How did this evildoer move in and out of and around the U,S.is just one of the questions answered. From the Able Danger scandal of the Clinton Administration to today's CIA Leakgate, Mohamed appears at nearly every crucial turn of America's terror probes. An important final piece to the 9/11 investigation, Triple Cross penetrates Mohamed's secret past and the dark reaches of Al Qaeda to reveal the danger that still threatens America and its internal security.
The conclusion of the 9/11 Commission in Staff Statement No. 15 was that it was “a matter of debate” whether Yousef was a member of al Qaida. Instead, the Commission called Yousef “part of a loose network of extremist Sunni Islamists who, like Bin Ladin, began to focus their rage on the United States.” But on April 10, 2011, The New York Times ran a story confirming Lance’s theory: In the piece entitled “In Federal Court, a Docket Number for Global Terror,” reporter Benjamin Weiser detailed how the Justice Department had amended the original 1993 World Trade Center bombing indictment to include KSM. The story was linked to a superseding indictment which now named KSM along Youef and Abdul Hakim Murad, the pilot trained in four U.S. flights schools whom Lance first reported, based on intelligence from The Philippines National Police, was to be the original pilot in the “planes as missiles plot."
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