Why the US Went to War in Iraq: New Video with Adam Fitzgerald

In this video, Adam Fitzgerald and I explain the reasons why the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, leading to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Below, I provide the English translations of the Italian articles in which I explain in detail the topics discussed in the video.

The Alleged Meeting in Prague Between Mohamed Atta and the Iraqi Consul

Original article in Italian

In the days following the 9/11 attacks, reports circulated in the press and within the U.S. administration claiming that Mohamed Atta, leader of the suicide hijacking team, had met in Prague in April 2001 with the Iraqi consul — and alleged IIS (Iraqi Intelligence Service) agent — Ahmad Samir al-Ani. The news was first published by Reuters on September 18, 2001, in an article that did not specify in which city the meeting allegedly took place and failed to indicate the source of the information. The same day, the story, containing the same vague details, was reported by the Associated Press.

On October 20, 2001, the New York Times published an article denying that there was evidence of a meeting between Atta and an Iraqi government official in Prague, citing Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross and MP Petr Nečas as sources. However, one week later the same newspaper reported that Gross himself had stated at a press conference that Atta met al-Ani in the Czech capital on April 8, 2001, and that the consul had subsequently been expelled for conducting activities unrelated to his diplomatic mandate. It later emerged that the suspicious activity carried out by al-Ani concerned the planning of an attack against the Prague headquarters of the American radio broadcaster Radio Free Europe, which at the time was located in the former Federal Assembly building.

On December 9, 2001, Dick Cheney confirmed in an interview on the television program Meet The Press that the government believed Atta had been in Prague in April and had met an Iraqi government representative there (notably, Cheney referred to Czechoslovakia rather than the Czech Republic, committing a historical error that was as striking as it was unjustifiable). The Bush administration later used the alleged meeting between Atta and al-Ani as one of the pretexts to justify the invasion of Iraq.

In reality, despite Cheney’s apparent certainty, the claim that Atta met al-Ani remained entirely anecdotal. Throughout 2002, a series of journalistic investigations reached widely differing conclusions. On May 15, the Washington Post wrote that the Czech prime minister and president had cast doubt on Gross’s statements, arguing that there was no certainty the meeting had occurred and that, even if it had, the discussion concerned a terrorist attack planned in Prague rather than the 9/11 attacks. On June 5, The Prague Post instead reported statements by Czech UN envoy Hynek Kmoníček claiming the meeting did take place.

On October 20, a new New York Times article reported that Czech President Vaclav Havel had officially informed the White House that there was no evidence of a meeting in Prague between Atta and al-Ani. Two days later, however, a spokesman for President Havel denied the report, claiming the story had been fabricated.

Alongside journalistic inquiries, numerous official investigations were conducted. As reported in Ron Suskind’s 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine, on September 19, 2001 Dick Cheney asked then–CIA Director George Tenet to investigate the matter. Tenet replied two days later, informing the vice president that the CIA’s Prague office was highly skeptical that Atta had met al-Ani there: phone records and credit card transactions indicated that Atta was in the United States at the time. The CIA report Iraqi Support for Terrorism (January 2003) likewise noted serious doubts that such a meeting had occurred. Tenet himself later confirmed before the Senate Armed Services Committee that, while it could not be ruled out with absolute certainty, the CIA considered it highly unlikely that Atta had met al-Ani in Prague.

The FBI conducted a similar investigation and reached the same conclusion as the CIA: after reviewing all of Atta’s activities during that period, there was no reason to believe he had left the United States in April 2001.

The 9/11 Commission also examined the issue. In the 9/11 Commission Report, a dedicated section explained that the claims about the alleged meeting were based on a single Czech intelligence source, while the Commission’s investigation concluded that Atta was in the United States during that week. The Commission added that if Atta had traveled to Prague at that time, he would have needed to do so under a false identity — something the hijacker had never done on any other occasion.

Czech police and intelligence services also investigated the matter, and as early as December 2001 the national police chief denied that there was evidence of a meeting between the two men. The Telegraph article reporting this added an important detail that may explain the misunderstanding: a member of Prague’s Arab community claimed to have repeatedly seen al-Ani with an Iraqi car dealer — who had sold him vehicles — and who closely resembled Atta. The anonymous Czech intelligence informant may therefore have mistaken the car dealer for the terrorist. In August 2002, the head of Czech foreign intelligence also confirmed that there was no evidence of the meeting and that the hypothesis was extremely implausible. In 2014, the former head of domestic intelligence revealed in his autobiography another crucial detail: according to his account, the United States pressured the Czech government to confirm the Prague meeting between Atta and the consul in order to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Beyond the resemblance to the car dealer, another event may have contributed to the confusion. Mohamed Atta first entered the United States on June 3, 2000, on a flight originating from Prague. Some initial investigations suggested that Atta had attempted to enter Prague on May 30 from Bonn but was turned away due to lacking a visa; he allegedly took a bus on June 1 and then entered the Czech Republic successfully. This detail led some to believe that Atta was in a hurry to enter the country — perhaps to meet someone — to the point that he could not wait even one day to regularize his visa status. In reality, this too was a misunderstanding: as explained by the Chicago Tribune in 2004, the man who attempted to enter Prague without a visa was not the terrorist Mohamed Atta but a Pakistani businessman named Mohammed Atta (with an extra “m” in the first name). Curiously, in some journalistic reconstructions Mohamed Atta was also confused with another near namesake, the terrorist Mahmoud Mahmoud Atta.

Al-Ani was taken into U.S. custody in July 2003 and in December of that year confirmed that he had never met Mohamed Atta. The New York Times article reporting his statement also included notable denials from Abu Zubaydah (an al-Qaeda militant) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the organizer of 9/11), both of whom confirmed that al-Qaeda had no ties to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

In 2006, Dick Cheney publicly admitted that it had been a mistake. In an interview, he stated that the source of the information was unreliable and that the most obvious conclusion was that the Prague meeting had never taken place (once again referring to Czechoslovakia instead of the Czech Republic). That same year Cheney repeated on Meet The Press that there was no evidence Atta had met Iraqi officials in Prague and that the claim had been based on mistaken identity.

In September 2006, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence published the second version of its Iraq report. The document included a specific paragraph titled Muhammad Atta Meeting with IIS in Prague, reiterating that the only source reporting the meeting was a single witness connected to Czech intelligence, while CIA and FBI investigations found no corroboration. Much of the chapter, however, remains classified. A Newsweek investigation that same month, citing anonymous informants, suggested that the classified section concerned disagreements between the CIA and the White House: presidential staff reportedly wished to continue emphasizing the claim publicly — even including it in a Bush speech in March 2003 — while the agency objected because the allegation lacked supporting evidence. The same Newsweek article also reported CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano’s denial that the classification served to protect the White House.

The full contours of the affair remain unclear to this day. It is certain that no links existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq, making it extremely unlikely that Mohamed Atta ever met a representative of Saddam Hussein’s government. However, the attempts by the U.S. government to promote this improbable theory remain difficult to explain, especially considering that it was used as one of the justifications for the 2003 Iraq War.

The Habbush memo: The Fabricated Document Purporting to Prove Links Between al Qaeda and Iraq

Original article in Italian

On December 13, 2003 — the day Saddam Hussein was captured — the London newspaper The Daily Telegraph published an article by renowned journalist Con Coughlin claiming that the newspaper’s editorial staff had received from unspecified Iraqi sources a handwritten note sent by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, former head of Iraqi intelligence, to President Saddam Hussein.

The note, dated July 1, 2001, stated that Mohamed Atta had participated in training in Baghdad during the summer of 2001 (therefore, reasonably, only days before the memo itself was written), conducted by the well-known Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal (organizer, among other attacks, of the assault on the check-in counters of TWA and El Al airlines at the Vienna and Rome airports on December 27, 1985). In the text, al-Tikriti praised Atta’s dedication and his leadership qualities as head of the group tasked with destroying important targets.

The second part of the document also mentioned a shipment of uranium that Iraq had allegedly received by ship from Niger, implicitly referring to Saddam Hussein’s supposed nuclear weapons program — an issue President George Bush had mentioned in his 2003 State of the Union address. The letter became known as the Habbush memo, after its alleged author.

A second article in the same newspaper, again written by Coughlin — also author of the 2002 biography Saddam: King of Terror — provided further details about the letter along with the journalist’s commentary asserting that the document proved the existence of links between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the 9/11 hijackers, and that the Iraqi government was pursuing a program to produce weapons of mass destruction.

The article also mentioned a previous discovery of documents at Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad allegedly referring to a 1998 meeting in Iraq between an al-Qaeda envoy and Iraqi government officials. The meeting was reportedly successful to the point that Osama bin Laden himself was planning a visit to Saddam Hussein’s state.

Interviewed on the television program Meet The Press on the same day the first article was published, Coughlin stated that he had received al-Tikriti’s letter from a member of the Iraqi interim government, whose identity he did not disclose. He added that the document had been authenticated and that the handwriting matched al-Tikriti’s — a stronger claim than in the Telegraph articles themselves, where he had been more cautious, noting that it was not possible to state with certainty that the document was authentic.

A few days after publication of the two articles, the American weekly Newsweek published a piece by Michael Isikoff raising reasonable doubts about the memo and its contents. First, the article noted that the FBI had carefully reconstructed Atta’s movements and determined that during the period when the Baghdad training allegedly occurred, the terrorist was in the United States. Moreover, even the Iraqi National Congress — an opposition political organization founded in 1992 with support from the U.S. administration and long supportive of claims linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda — expressed serious doubts about the authenticity of the letter. Isikoff also asked Coughlin directly about the memo’s authenticity, but the British journalist replied that his newspaper had no way of verifying the document.

Another investigation into the Habbush memo was conducted by journalist Ron Suskind in his book The Way of the World, published on August 5, 2008. According to Suskind, the letter was a forgery deliberately produced by the CIA and the White House. He wrote that the CIA had initially intended to have Habbush himself write the letter, but that he refused; following this refusal, the agency allegedly decided to fabricate the document. Suskind cited CIA officials Robert Richer and George Tenet, as well as MI6’s Nigel Inkster, as sources. All three later denied having made the statements attributed to them in Suskind’s book.

Tenet acknowledged that the Bush administration had pressured the CIA to portray links between al-Qaeda and Iraq as stronger than supported by available evidence, but he denied that the agency had deliberately created a forged document. The CIA also issued a public and official statement denying that it had received any request to fabricate the memo.

Nigel Inkster also returned to the subject, confirming that he had spoken with Suskind but stating that he had told the journalist he was not in a position to comment on the Habbush memo because he lacked detailed knowledge of the matter.

Two days after publicity surrounding Suskind’s book, Philip Giraldi — a former CIA counterterrorism officer — wrote in an article for The American Conservative that some of his sources confirmed Suskind’s claim that the White House had ordered the creation of a forged memo. However, Suskind was allegedly mistaken regarding who carried out the forgery: according to Giraldi, it was not commissioned to the CIA but to the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon unit that existed for only ten months and was tasked with supplying raw intelligence on Iraq to the President. At the time, it was directed by Douglas Feith, who in 2003 also served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Ayad Allawi

On August 8, 2008, an article by Joe Conason published in the online magazine Salon offered an interesting clue supporting Suskind’s theory while simultaneously clearing Coughlin of potential accusations of participating in a forgery. The author identified Ayad Allawi — then head of the Iraqi interim government — as the source who had provided the original document to Coughlin, adding that Allawi had visited CIA headquarters in Langley just days before the first Telegraph article on the matter.

About ten days after Suskind’s book was published, Coughlin himself returned to the issue with an article strongly critical of Suskind, confirming that Allawi had indeed been the source who handed him the document but stating that their meeting had taken place in Baghdad in November 2003. In the article, Coughlin firmly reiterated that the CIA had played no role in producing the memo.

At the same time, the chairman of the United States House Judiciary Committee — the body within the House of Representatives responsible for oversight of the administration of justice — announced that he had tasked his staff with investigating the claims advanced by Ron Suskind as part of a broader inquiry into alleged abuses by the Bush administration, particularly regarding the push for a preventive war against Saddam Hussein’s regime. Concerning the Habbush memo, however, the committee ultimately concluded that although the document appeared to be a forgery, it was not possible to determine who had commissioned it.

To this day, the contours of this affair remain highly unclear. It is unknown who created the memo, under what circumstances, or for what purpose. The respective roles of the White House and the CIA also remain uncertain. This too belongs among the gray areas surrounding 9/11 — areas entirely unrelated to the nonsense repeated by conspiracy theorists for more than two decades.

Inside Iraq: Intelligence from the Ground with Retired FBI Special Agent Robert Clifford

In this interview, retired FBI Special Agent Robert F. Clifford shares his firsthand experience working in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

We talk about intelligence and counterterrorism on the ground, collaboration with Iraqi authorities, interagency dynamics with U.S. forces, the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, foreign fighters, early warning signs of ISIS, and the mistakes and lessons that still matter today.

A rare, ground-level perspective on Iraq — beyond headlines and hindsight.

Who Was Anwar al-Awlaki: The American Imam Who Helped the Hijackers

La versione in italiano è disponibile qui.

Among the figures linked to al-Qaeda who had contact with the hijackers during the period in which they lived in the USA, there is one with a particularly distinctive profile, as he was not a citizen of an Arab state, but American. Imam Anwar al-Awlaki (whose name is written as Anwar Aulaqi in the 9/11 Commission Report) was in fact born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on April 21, 1971, into a family that had strong ties to the Yemeni government. His father Nasser al-Awlaki had been Minister of Agriculture for two years (as reported by the newspaper Santa Fe New Mexican) around 1990 (according to what was written by his son in al-Qaeda’s online magazine Inspire). Nasser al-Awlaki was also president of Sana'a University, again according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, starting in 2001. In addition, he was also related to Ali Mohammed Mujur, prime minister of Yemen from 2007 to 2011, although there is no more precise information on the degree of kinship: CNN, like other sources found online, simply uses the word relative.

Anwar al-Awlaki moved to Yemen with his family in 1978 and remained there for eleven years; upon his return he enrolled at Colorado State University, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. In the summer of 1993, before finishing his studies in Colorado, he spent several months in Afghanistan, where he joined the mujahideen in fighting the Soviet invasion; during the period spent in the Asian country he began to develop a deep interest in politics and religion. Upon his return to the USA, in addition to his engineering degree, he obtained a master’s degree in Education Leadership at the University of San Diego.

In 1994 he married a Yemeni cousin and began his activity as an imam in Denver, where he remained for another two years before moving again to San Diego. From 1996 to 2000 he was imam of the al-Ribat mosque, where two of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, listened to many of his sermons. During this period al-Awlaki came onto the FBI’s radar for possible contacts with Hamas, with al-Qaeda member Ziyad Khaleel and with the jihadist Omar Abdel-Rahman (also known as The Blind Sheikh), however investigators were unable to gather sufficient evidence to bring charges against him.

In 2000 he moved to Washington to pursue a doctorate in Human Resources Development at George Washington University, and in the capital he carried out his work as an imam at the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque, where the hijacker pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, Hani Hanjour (along with Nawaf al-Hazmi), also listened to his sermons. At the time he was considered a peaceful and moderate man, with no connections to terrorism, whose strength lay in his ability to attract worshippers who did not speak Arabic, given that he obviously spoke native-level English. In those years he also became the Muslim chaplain of George Washington University.

The Dar Al-Hijrah mosque

Immediately after 9/11, al-Awlaki maintained his public role as a moderate imam and, in various interviews including those given to the New York Times and National Geographic, condemned the attacks. He also led a prayer at the US Capitol for the Congressional Muslim Staffer Association (a bicameral organization that brings together Muslim members of Congress). At the same time, however, he displayed ambiguous behavior, because six days after the attacks he wrote a post on the website IslamOnLine.net in which he claimed that the perpetrators of the attacks could have been Israeli intelligence services and that the FBI was focusing only on passengers with Arabic names. The man returned to the attention of the FBI when investigators discovered that three of the hijackers had attended the mosques where he preached and that Ramzi bin al-Shibh (coordinator of the Hamburg cell) had his phone number among his personal contacts. The FBI placed him under surveillance and interrogated him four times in the eight days following 9/11; however, not enough elements emerged to link him to the attacks.

In June 2002 a federal judge issued an arrest warrant for Anwar al-Awlaki on the grounds that he had made false statements when applying for a passport, claiming to be Yemeni and not American, in order to obtain a scholarship that was intended exclusively for foreign citizens. However, a few months later, prosecutors dropped the warrant, arguing that there was insufficient evidence to justify an arrest; one of them added in a statement to the press that by doing so al-Awlaki would have had fewer chances of obtaining a social security number than if he had declared himself American. On the very same day the warrant was withdrawn (or according to other reconstructions, the following day), al-Awlaki was briefly detained at JFK airport upon returning to the USA from Saudi Arabia, both because of the arrest warrant and because he was on the FBI’s terrorism watch list; however, he was released after less than an hour and a half because the warrant had been withdrawn, and the man was thus able to continue his journey to Washington.

In the final months of 2002, al-Awlaki left the USA to move to the United Kingdom due to the hostile climate that had developed around him following 9/11. He remained in the United Kingdom until 2004, the year in which the 9/11 Commission Report was published. According to what is reported in the commission’s report, Anwar al-Awlaki played an active role in the execution of the 9/11 attacks, because although he was not Saudi he collaborated with the Saudis who assisted the hijackers. The 9/11 Commission Report specifies that the man tasked Eyad al-Rababah, an al-Qaeda member originally from Jordan who had moved to the USA, with helping Hani Hanjour find housing once he settled in Virginia. According to what was reported by FBI Special Agent Wade Ammerman, al-Awlaki himself hosted them for a certain period. In addition, the imam also collaborated directly with Omar al-Bayoumi, with whom he spoke by phone four times on February 4, 2000, the day al-Bayoumi helped the two terrorists find an apartment, and he met the two hijackers for the first time on the very day they arrived in San Diego.

He returned to Yemen in 2004, where he taught at al-Iman University, an institution that promoted Islamic radicalism and was founded and at the time directed by al-Qaeda associate Abdul Majeed al-Zindani. In 2006 he was arrested for having participated in the kidnapping of a young Shiite in order to demand ransom from the family and for having planned the kidnapping of a collaborator of American military personnel. During his imprisonment he was interrogated by the FBI about the 9/11 attacks. He was released in 2007 following pressure from his tribe or, according to another version, because he demonstrated that he had repented. After being released from prison, al-Awlaki took refuge in the mountainous area of Yemen between the governorates of Shabwa and Mareb.

The FBI continued its investigations into him and concluded that he collaborated with al-Qaeda as a recruiter and spiritual guide and that he had ties to various terrorists, such as Nidal Hasan (the perpetrator of the 2009 Fort Hood military base shooting), Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (known as the Christmas Underwear Bomber, the man who attempted to blow himself up on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009), and Faisal Shahzad (known as the Times Square Bomber, who planned a car bomb attack in Times Square in 2010). His messages and sermons were also found by investigators on the computers of many terrorism suspects in the USA and Canada. In addition, the imam himself called for jihad against the USA, arguing that it should unite Muslims around the world.

Because of his ties to al-Qaeda, the Yemeni government initially attempted to kill him with an airstrike and later to obtain his surrender from local tribal leaders, with the promise not to hand him over to the USA, but both attempts failed.

In 2010 the White House placed al-Awlaki on the list of individuals whom the CIA was authorized to kill because of his terrorist activities; the decision was nevertheless controversial because ordering the killing of an American citizen requires authorization from an internal group within the National Security Council, whose activities lack transparency. The following year, U.S. forces located him, also thanks to the work of the spy Morten Storm whom we interviewed in 2024, and attempted twice to kill him with drones, the first time unsuccessfully in May and the second time, on September 30, when they killed him.

The debate over the legality of the targeted killing mission continued for years, and in 2014 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Obama Administration had to make public the documents authorizing the operation. The Department of Justice therefore published a memorandum dating back to 2010; the document was harshly criticized by the New York Times, which argued that the threat posed by al-Awlaki was vague and called for the release of additional evidence regarding the decision-making process.

That of al-Awlaki is, in short, a very complex case that illustrates how difficult it is to untangle the web of events surrounding 9/11. It shows, for example, how the network of Saudi citizens who assisted the hijackers had significant contacts also among American extremist Muslims and, at the same time, how difficult it is to make decisions on how to combat terrorism, balancing citizens’ rights and national security.

Chi è Anwar al-Awlaki: l’imam americano che aiutò i dirottatori

An English version is available here.

Tra le personalità legate ad al-Qaeda che hanno avuto contatti con i dirottatori nel periodo in cui questi vissero negli USA, ce n'è uno dal profilo particolare, in quanto non era cittadino di uno stato arabo, ma americano. L'imam Anwar al-Awlaki (il cui nome è scritto come Anwar Aulaqi nel 9/11 Commission Report) nacque infatti a Las Cruces, nel New Mexico, il 21 aprile del 1971, da una famiglia che aveva forti legami con il governo yemenita. Il padre Nasser al-Awlaki era stato Ministro dell'Agricoltura per due anni (come riportato dal giornale Santa Fe New Mexican) intorno al 1990 (secondo quanto scritto dal figlio sulla rivista online di al-Qaeda Inspire). Nasser al-Awlaki fu anche presidente dell'Università di Sana'a, di nuovo secondo il Santa Fe New Mexican, a partire dal 2001. Inoltre fu anche parente di Ali Mohammed Mujur, primo ministro dello Yemen dal 2007 al 2011, anche se non ci sono informazioni più precise sul grado di parentela: la CNN, così come le altre fonti che si trovano in rete, usa semplicemente la parola relative.

Anwar al-Awlaki si trasferì nello Yemen con la famiglia nel 1978 e vi rimase per undici anni, al suo ritorno si iscrisse alla Colorado State University dove prese una laurea triennale in ingegneria civile. Nell'estate del 1993, prima di finire gli studi in Colorado, trascorse alcuni mesi in Afghanistan dove si unì ai mujaheddin nel combattere l'invasione sovietica; nel periodo trascorso nel paese asiatico iniziò a maturare un profondo interesse verso la politica e la religione. Al suo ritorno negli USA, oltre alla laurea in ingegneria, conseguì una laurea magistrale in Education Leadership all'Università di San Diego.

Nel 1994 sposò una cugina yemenita e iniziò la sua attività di imam a Denver, dove rimase per altri due anni prima di spostarsi di nuovo a San Diego. Dal 1996 al 2000 fu imam della moschea al-Ribat dove due dei dirottatori del volo American Airlines 77, Khalid al-Mihdhar e Nawaf al-Hazmi, ascoltarono molti dei suoi sermoni. In questo periodo al-Awlaki finì nel radar dell'FBI per possibili contatti con Hamas, con il membro di al-Qaeda Ziyad Khaleel e con lo jihadista Omar Abdel-Rahman (altresì noto come The Blind Sheikh), tuttavia gli investigatori non riuscirono a raccogliere sufficienti prove per formulare un'accusa contro di lui.

Nel 2000 si spostò a Washington per prendere un dottorato in Sviluppo delle Risorse Umane alla George Washington University e nella capitale svolse il suo lavoro di imam alla moschea Dar Al-Hijrah, dove anche il dirottatore pilota del volo American Airlines 77 Hani Hanjour (insieme a Nawaf al-Hazmi) ascoltò i suoi sermoni. Al tempo veniva considerato un uomo pacifico e moderato, che non aveva connessioni con il terrorismo, la cui forza stava nella capacità di attrarre fedeli che non parlavano arabo, visto che ovviamente lui parlava inglese madrelingua. In quegli anni divenne anche il cappellano musulmano della George Washington University.

La moschea Dar Al-Hijrah

Subito dopo l'11/9, al-Awlaki mantenne il suo ruolo pubblico di imam moderato e, in varie interviste tra cui quelle rilasciate al New York Times e al National Geographic, condannò gli attentati. Condusse anche una preghiera allo US Capitol per la Congressional Muslim Staffer Association (organizzazione bicamerale che riunisce i membri del Congresso musulmani). Al contempo, però, tenne un comportamento ambiguo, perché sei giorni dopo gli attentati scrisse un post sul sito IslamOnLine.net in cui sosteneva che gli autori degli attentati potessero essere i servizi segreti israeliani e che l'FBI si stesse focalizzando solo sui passeggeri con nomi arabi. L'uomo tornò nelle attenzioni dell'FBI quando gli investigatori scoprirono che tre dei dirottatori avevano frequentato le moschee dove predicava e che Ramzi bin al-Shibh (coordinatore della cellula di Amburgo) aveva il suo numero di telefono tra i contatti personali. L'FBI lo mise sotto sorveglianza e lo interrogò quattro volte negli otto giorni seguenti all'11/9, tuttavia non emersero abbastanza elementi che lo collegassero agli attentati.

A giugno del 2002 un giudice federale emise un mandato di arresto per Anwar al-Awlaki in quanto questi aveva dichiarato il falso nel fare la richiesta del passaporto, sostenendo di essere yemenita e non americano, al fine di poter prendere una borsa di studio che era destinata unicamente a cittadini stranieri. Tuttavia, pochi mesi dopo, i procuratori annullarono il mandato, sostenendo che non ci fossero sufficienti prove per giustificare un arresto; uno di loro aggiunse in una dichiarazione alla stampa che così facendo al-Awlaki avrebbe avuto meno possibilità di ottenere un numero di previdenza sociale, che non se si fosse dichiarato americano. Proprio lo stesso giorno in cui il mandato fu ritirato (o secondo altre ricostruzioni, il giorno seguente), al-Awlaki fu brevemente trattenuto all'aeroporto JFK di ritorno negli USA dall'Arabia Saudita, sia per via del mandato di arresto sia perché era sulla lista dei sospettati di terrorismo dell'FBI; tuttavia venne rilasciato dopo meno di un'ora e mezza perché il mandato era stato ritirato, l'uomo poté quindi proseguire il suo viaggio verso Washington.

Negli ultimi mesi del 2002, al-Awlaki lasciò gli USA per trasferirsi nel Regno Unito a causa del clima ostile che si era creato attorno a lui in seguito all'11/9. Rimase nel Regno Unito fino al 2004, anno in cui fu pubblicato il 9/11 Commission Report. Secondo quanto riportato nel rapporto della commissione, Anwar al-Awlaki ebbe un ruolo attivo nella realizzazione degli attentati dell'11/9, perché pur non essendo saudita collaborò con i sauditi che aiutarono i dirottatori. Il 9/11 Commission Report specifica infatti che l'uomo incaricò Eyad al-Rababah, membro di al-Qaeda originario della Giordania trasferitosi negli USA, di aiutare Hani Hanjour nel trovare una casa una volta stabilitosi in Virginia. Secondo quanto riportato dall'Agente Speciale dell'FBI Wade Ammerman, lo stesso al-Awlaki li ospitò per un certo periodo. Inoltre l'imam collaborò anche direttamente con Omar al-Bayoumi, con cui parlò al telefono quattro volte il 4 febbraio del 2000, il giorno in cui al-Bayoumi aiutò i due terroristi a trovare un appartamento, e incontrò per la prima volta i due dirottatori il giorno stesso in cui arrivarono a San Diego.

Tornò in Yemen proprio nel 2004 dove insegnò all'Università al-Iman, ateneo che promuoveva il radicalismo islamico fondato e al tempo diretto dall'associato di al-Qaeda Abdul Majeed al-Zindani. Nel 2006 fu arrestato per aver partecipato al rapimento di un giovane sciita al fine di chiedere il riscatto alla famiglia e per aver pianificato il rapimento di un collaboratore dei militari americani. Durante la prigionia fu interrogato dall'FBI sugli attentati dell'11/9. Fu rilasciato nel 2007 a seguito della pressione della sua tribù o, secondo un'altra versione, perché dimostrò di essersi pentito. Dopo essere stato rilasciato dal carcere, al-Awlaki si rifugiò nella zona delle montagne yemenite compresa tra i governatorati di Shabwa e Mareb.

L'FBI proseguì le indagini su di lui e giunse alla conclusione che collaborasse con al-Qaeda come reclutatore e guida spirituale e che avesse legami con vari terroristi, come Nidal Hasan (l'attentatore della base militare di Fort Hood del 2009), Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (noto come Christmas Underwear Bomber, che tentò di farsi esplodere sul volo Northwest Airlines Flight 253 il giorno di Natale del 2009) e Faisal Shahzad (noto come Times Square Bomber, che pianificò un attentato con autobomba a Times Square nel 2010). I suoi messaggi e sermoni vennero trovati dagli inquirenti anche sui computer di molti sospettati di terrorismo negli USA e in Canada. Inoltre, lo stesso imam invitò alla jihad contro gli USA, sostenendo che questa dovesse unire i musulmani di tutto il mondo.

Per via dei suoi legami con al-Qaeda, il governo yemenita tentò dapprima di ucciderlo con un bombardamento aereo e in seguito di ottenere la sua consegna da parte dei leader tribali della zona, con la promessa di non consegnarlo agli USA, ma entrambi i tentativi fallirono.

Nel 2010 la Casa Bianca inserì al-Awlaki nella lista delle persone che la CIA era autorizzata a uccidere per via delle proprie attività terroristiche, la decisione fu comunque controversa perché per ordinare l'uccisione di un cittadino americano serve l'autorizzazione di un gruppo interno al Consiglio per la Sicurezza Nazionale, sulla cui attività c'è poca trasparenza. L'anno seguente, le forze USA lo localizzarono, anche grazie al lavoro della spia Morten Storm da noi intervistato nel 2024, e tentarono due volte di ucciderlo con dei droni, la prima volta a maggio senza successo la seconda in cui lo uccisero il 30 settembre.

Il dibattito sulla liceità della missione di eliminazione mirata andò avanti per anni e nel 2014 la Corte d'Appello del Secondo Circuito stabilì che l'Amministrazione Obama dovesse rendere pubblici i documenti con cui aveva autorizzato l'operazione. Il Dipartimento di Giustizia pubblicò quindi un memorandum risalente al 2010, il documento venne aspramente criticato dal New York Times che riteneva che la minaccia posta da al-Awlaki fosse vaga e auspicava che altre evidenze sul processo decisionale venissero rilasciate.

Quello di al-Awlaki è, in sintesi un caso molto complesso che spiega quanto sia difficile districare la matassa degli eventi a contorno dell'11/9. Mostra, ad esempio, come la rete dei cittadini sauditi che aiutarono i dirottatori avesse importanti contatti anche tra i musulmani estremisti americani e, al contempo, quando sia difficile prendere decisioni su come combattere il terrorismo, tra i diritti dei cittadini e la sicurezza nazionale.

A Conversation with Historian Sean Munger on Conspiracy Thinking in America

I recently hosted historian and history teacher Sean Munger on my YouTube channel for a wide-ranging conversation about conspiracy theories in American history. While the interview is not exclusively focused on 9/11, it directly addresses the psychological and cultural mechanisms that lead people to believe fabricated or unsupported theories.

Throughout the discussion, we return several times to 9/11 conspiracy theories, using them as a case study to illustrate how distrust in institutions, oversimplification, and misinformation take root and spread. The conversation provides historical context that helps explain why such narratives persist long after official investigations and evidence are made public.

The Moussaoui Case and the Missed Chance to Stop 9/11, with Former FBI Special Agent Harry Samit

I sat down with former FBI Special Agent Harry Samit, the investigator who handled the Zacarias Moussaoui case in August 2001 — a case now widely seen as one of the key missed opportunities to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

In our conversation, Samit explains how the investigation began, why Moussaoui raised immediate concerns at the Minnesota flight school, and the internal obstacles that prevented the FBI from obtaining a search warrant before the attacks. He also describes what was discovered afterward and reflects on the broader intelligence limitations that shaped the events leading up to 9/11.

It’s a detailed, first-hand account of a critical moment in the lead-up to the attacks and of a warning that ultimately went unheeded.

Who Was Anwar al-Awlaki? A New Episode of My Series with Adam Fitzgerald

In this new episode, fellow researcher Adam Fitzgerald and I break down the life of Imam Anwar al-Awlaki — the American al-Qaeda associate who preached in San Diego and Virginia, and whose sermons were attended by three of the hijackers of American Airlines 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.