Hey guys, welcome back to the conspiracy podcast. Yo, yo. Uh What up, guys? My name is Eric. This is Jorge. And I’m Shawn. I hope you all have a good day. I hope Hope you guys are doing well. Uh we just got finished doing the first precursor to 9/11. Yes, the first in the funnel to 9/11. Yeah, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Now, we do recommend that you go back and you actually listen to that because you you should go back more sense when you know the whole story. and it does kind of transition over to to what we’re going to do tonight.

So, tonight is the rise of Al-Qaeda. Mhm. But before we get into the rise of Al-Qaeda, we got to shout out to our patrons. Hell yeah. And our patrons probably caught our after hours episode after the after last one here, but let’s just dive right in. We got Matthew J with a founding crew membership. I I think this is Australia. It’s A. Oh, yeah. Is A Australia? I thought it was AU, but whatever. By the way, this next batch is very We’re very worldwide now. Oh, yeah. This is worldwide. We’re worldwide now. So, then we got Ed with a yearly founding crew. Love you, dog.

We got Dan the Man from Canada with a founding crew membership. Okay. Then we got Moosley X, which is from Hungary. Yeah. Oh. So, we got a little Hungarian. Then we’ve got uh Eoin Eoin. I’m so sorry for pronouncing this wrong. It’s Eoin Eoin? Mhm. I think it’s actually Eoin. T. I think it’s the last name. No, honestly, like Irish Northern Irish, they’ve got crazy A It’s like It’s like John. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like it’s it’s crazy. it. So, Eoin T. Uh [laughter] He’s going to love it so much. And then uh he’s a founding crew member, and it’s a euro, so he’s probably isn’t from Ireland.

Uh we’ll ask We’ll ask him, my little Yeah, that’s your little Yeah. Then we got Tyler J with a founding crew membership from from from England cuz that’s a pound. I think it’s a pound. Sterling? Yeah, I think it’s a pound. Sterling or euro? That’s pound. No, cuz the yuan was a pound was a was a euro. Then we got Meg B the Oki for a founding crew membership. I think she’s in She’s in the old the old Discord. Then we’ve got Amber with the black heart. Rich person. Girl after my own heart. Way to go. We Amber, listen, answer Eric. He’s trying to He’s just trying to He’s just trying to get your episode choice.

So, if you’re a rich person status, you get a you get your own episode topic and you get a signed hat from all three of us. Yeah. So, like just answer. Yeah, we just We just want to get you like the goods. It’s No no other reason. We got Allison with a yearly founding crew membership. Then we got Rick S with a yearly founding crew membership. These yearly got I mean, god, you guys are you guys trying to turn me on? What’s going on right here? Then we got John Wayne C with a yearly founding crew membership. All right. And last but Awesome name. I know.

It’s I didn’t I didn’t read the full last name, but And then last but certainly not least, we got Patrick R another one from over the pond at a founding crew membership. I I feel like I feel like England I feel like England is like like a hot like a hot bed over there. Popping off over there. I know. The English are like I’m Five of them is you. We actually uh I think we we we popped up. We were in the top 250 Yes. in England. The whole country. Yeah, we ranked. It’s a great thing. I think we’re number like 222 or something like that.

Come for that number one. I know. I mean, our [bleep] the number like 70. [bleep] [laughter] it. I’ll take it. Top 100. I know. Literally, put me in the hundreds. Okay, so last time we ended off uh on an on a helicopter over Manhattan. FBI agents flying a blindfolded prisoner named Ramzi Yousef back into American custody after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Lifted the blindfold just long enough to point down at the Twin Towers that were still standing and say, “Look, they are still standing. You failed [snorts] in your mission.” [bleep] you. And Yousef told them that they wouldn’t be if he had enough money and the explosives and support in order to do it.

From his uncle? So, yes. So, he left you with one more name, which was his uncle, a financier on the margins who wired $660 to help his nephew’s plot along. And then stepped back into the shadows. A man who in ’93 was nobody’s idea of a mastermind. His name was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I know, is this Sheikh I always thought that Sheikh was like a title. But I don’t I don’t know I don’t know I get that’s his name. Like I’m I understand. Yeah. I just say every time I hear it I’m like I’m like is dude like balling outrageous? So, no, no. It and great that you brought it up because it does actually mean a respected elder or scholar.

Oh, okay. So, yeah, okay. I knew I I know [bleep] I know everything. I know things. So, for the for the rest of the night though, we’re going to call him KSM. That’s way That’s way easier. Right? His Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Okay. But we’re going to call him KSM. Yeah. So, here’s the thing about the $660 wire transfer. It didn’t really come out of nowhere. KSM didn’t wake up one day and decide to fund a truck bomb. He was already plugged into something. A network. An ideology. A whole underground railroad of money and fighters and true believers that had been building for almost a decade before that van ever parked in the World Trade Center.

And by the time his nephew’s bomb failed to bring the towers down, that network already had a name. Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda. [bleep] Do we know what Al-Qaeda like means? Is there like some like sort of like significance behind like the name? If you’ve never heard that word before tonight Oh, like they they like the Gen Z’ers. Yeah, like the the what? 16 to 25? Oh, yeah, they don’t know. They don’t know They don’t know what we They don’t know what we went through. You know what us millennials went through. So, if you’ve never heard that word before tonight, genuinely, if this is the first time you’re sitting down and getting the actual story instead of just absorbing the word of 25 years of headlines, good.

That’s the point of this episode. Is to really explain the story of Al-Qaeda. Yeah. Because most people know Al-Qaeda the way you know a monster in a movie you walked in on halfway through. You know it’s a villain. You know it’s a bad guy. It’s the bad guy. You don’t know but there’s you don’t know anything else. It’s the Nazis. Remember in the ’80s, all the movies were about Nazis? Of course. The bad guy was the Nazis. You got [bleep] It’s also like how it was with the Russians. You know, it’s like it’s always the Russians and the Nazis in every movie. Like it’s always it’s always one of them.

Yes. So, then you fast forward to nowadays or this time period and it’s Al-Qaeda. Even all the movies from nowadays are Al-Qaeda. Yeah. It’s Dude, first of all, I don’t care if we pronounce No, let’s talk about terrorist groups correctly. Yes. Like who cares? There is technically [clears throat] two pronunciations. Okay. Al-Qaeda, that’s how we say it over here in America. And then the British say Al-Qaeda. So, you can say whatever. Yeah. Okay. And to Shawn’s point, who gives a [bleep] these [bleep] Yeah. Yeah. But, you know it’s the villain, but you don’t know his childhood. And tonight, we’re going to give you that story.

So, this episode will end on September [laughter] It’s all right. Now, this episode will end on September 10th. Oh, [bleep] Oh my god, what a cliffhanger. So, it’s 1 day before everything changes. Because what happens after that gets its own series. And that’s going to come up in the week following the release of this episode. [snorts] So, tonight is the origin story. Yeah. Al-Qaeda origins. That’s right. So, December 24th, 1979. The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. Even the Russians didn’t like that. On paper, this is a Cold War chess move. Moscow propping up a struggling communist government against a local rebellion. But, across the Muslim world, it doesn’t read as a chess move.

It reads as an atheist superpower rolling tanks into a Muslim country. But, I mean, are the Russians really atheists though? Well, they’re they’re against uh A lot of people. from from the viewpoint of Okay. They’re Anyone who’s not Anyone who’s not like with us or anything. But, atheist means that you don’t believe in anything. I would assume that a major Like, it’s kind of like America. Like, how much of American population believes in a certain god? But, we don’t consider other religions atheist. No, no, I know. It’s not like, “Oh, you believe in Judaism, you’re atheist.” True. Yeah, it’s like, “Oh, the Muslims aren’t like, ‘Oh, they’re atheist.'” True.

It just seems like it’s like a kind of a broad Yeah, yeah, that’s true. sweeping generality. Yeah, that’s But that framing is going to matter more than most almost anything in this story, which is that they think whether or not they’re right or wrong, they think that it’s an atheist country like a communistic country invading their region. Yeah. Thousands of young Arab men from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, all over start making their way to the Afghan-Pakistan border to join the resistance. History calls them the Afghan Arabs. Okay. The Afghan fighters themselves are called Mujahideen from an Arabic word meaning those who struggle. Mhm. Tied to the word jihad.

Which is like holy war, [bleep] yeah. Which literally just means struggle. Oh, okay. [bleep] that up. No, no, not on its own cuz there’s also the aspect of holy war. Mhm. Which is exactly what you brought up. And that’s a much narrower translation the word actually carries. So keep that in your little hat because it’s going to get twisted later in the story. Okay. Mhm. And you can see how like just because you’re Muslim doesn’t mean you’re a terrorist. No, of course not. Right? course not. So what you can see how sex or sex Like sex sexed sex Yeah. will pervert Yeah, well no, we’re looking at we’re we’re talking about the radical Islamist.

Yes, like obviously if you really think about it like like Muslims are comprised of the largest they’re the largest religious group on the Earth. Yes. Exactly. So and here’s a detail that tends to surprise people. American money is flowing into that same resistance. Okay. So it’s documented that American money was funneled through Pakistan and Saudi Arabia because Washington wants the Soviets bogged down Yeah. and bleeding just as much as anyone else does. Well, this isn’t the first time that the US government is like Playbook. has funded I mean they we’ve been doing like yeah, this is like old school playbook. Yeah. Like they’re like how about we just give them weapons?

And you got to keep in mind this is the time period of the Cold War. Mhm. So our enemy was Russia. was the Soviet Union. 100%. Right. you weaken them? Yeah, exactly, right. Fund their [bleep] enemies. So for a few years in the 1980s, the United States and the future architects of Al-Qaeda are functionally pulling in the same direction. They’re not allies. No, but wasn’t this also like tied into the fact that like wasn’t like US military assets like training them? And like not not only giving them money and and not only giving them money, weapons, they’re also like training them. Yeah. Yeah. But they weren’t Technically speaking, they were not allies.

No. No, it’s just But it was like You have the same The enemy of my The enemy is my friend. Yes, yes. That is exactly right. Yes. So two men are going to walk out of this war with the blueprint for something the world has never seen before. The first is Abdullah Azzam and it means servant of God. He was born in 1941 in a village in what was then British controlled Palestine. Azzam became a serious Islamic scholar earning a doctorate from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, one of the oldest and most respected centers of Islamic learning on Earth. Okay. By the time the Soviets invade Afghanistan, he’s already a name in religious circles.

His slogan becomes famous in jihadist circles for a reason and I quote, “Jihad and the rifle alone, no negotiations, no conferences, no dialogue.” Oh, so it’s just like war only. Ride or die. Some later call him the father of global jihad. Mhm. It’s not a compliment. No, it’s That’s just what Mhm. They call him. That’s what they call him. The second man is his student. His name’s Osama bin Laden. And Osama means lion. A name built to to show bravery and nobility. Osama bin Laden was born in 1957 in Saudi Arabia. One of somewhere around 57 children. How is that even fit humanly possible? You’re having kids your whole entire life.

Like your entire life is literally child bearing. What the [bleep] is How’s that possible? There’s got to be multiple moms. There’s no way that was one mom. No. Impossible. No way. It’s [bleep] impossible. Isn’t that inc- That’s crazy. How do you remember all their names? He has Mhm. roughly 50 56 siblings. Siblings. Dude, you I used to start calling people numbers. Yeah. Like one, get over here. And what a lot of people don’t know is that his father was a billionaire. Mhm. Oh, really? Osama’s father was a billionaire. He was a construction magnate. Magnate. Magnate. Magnate. Yeah. He was a construction magnate. Like a a mogul.

Like a Titan of industry. Titan of industry, yeah. He had deep ties with the Saudi royal family. Who were like [bleep] bajillionaires. Yeah. Bajillionaires. Osama grows up wealthy and devout. And by his own biographer’s accounts, shaken by the Soviet invasion. He started small, money, supplies, logistics from the sidelines. Then he goes to the frontier city of Peshawar in Pakistan and finds Azam. And he’s like oh and he’s like let me teach you about the history, brother. In 1984, the two of them found something called Maktab al-Khidamat. And this translates to the Services Bureau. To make this as confusing as possible. I know. Let’s make the name very complex.

So we’re going to just call that the MAK. There we go. Perfect. Yeah, it’s it’s I mean it’s strange that they have acronyms similar to like the CIA. Why are they all Why are they all three-letter acronyms? So it’s MAK. Yeah. Okay. Picture it as a recruitment and logistics pipeline. It houses incoming Arab volunteers, trains them, funds them. This is the part that should generally surprise you. It builds roughly 30 offices across the United States. Hm. Oh, great. That’s [bleep] great. Wow. Including one mosque in Brooklyn called the Al Kifah Refugee Center. And it’s an American recruitment office for the Afghan Jihad operating openly in New York City in the ’80s.

Damn. Azam and Bin Laden even put out a magazine together called Al Jihad. So think about that for a second. In the middle of the 1980s, there’s a functioning American office network recruiting office essentially openly moving money and eventually fighters towards a war in Central Asia in Brooklyn with barely any resistance from anyone. Yeah, this is a a perfect cover cuz you can’t legally enter that. Right. Even in times of war or anything, you can’t enter the mosque. That’s right. Yeah, cuz it’s a religious spot or whatever. Yeah. Most historians agree this is the seed. This is the beginning of this is the the start.

This is the start. Yeah, but obviously once again like we had brought up in the last episode is like Oh, and but they didn’t know. Mhm. They had no idea this is happening. Oh my god, right under our noses. It almost feels like this entire series that we’re doing is going to be the question of negligence. How much did they know? How much is Well, what is negligence and what is conspiratorial? Yeah. Exactly. Right. Like it can’t be all ineptitude. Yeah. [bleep] impossible. So, bin Laden doesn’t just want to write checks. He wants to fight. In 1986, he builds his own training camp inside of Afghanistan near a village called Jaji.

Jaji. And he names it Al-Masada, the lion’s den. I mean, there’s a little bit of Hitler vibes going on in there. Oh, yeah. Full of lions and [bleep] regal. They’re trying to be like you know. The And if if you didn’t know, Hitler called his retreat the Wolf’s Den. Mhm. So, you know what I mean? It just Yeah. a little They’re all conceited as [bleep] a little It seems like a little connected in a weird way. Yeah. In the spring of ’87 at the Battle of Jaji, a small band of Arab volunteers holds out against a Soviet assault. It’s a minor skirmish in a much bigger war, but the Arab press covers it like a legend in the making.

Yeah, like say the Alamo. Yeah. Day after day, and bin Laden, the shy wealthy kid from today, comes out the other side as if almost like a battlefield hero. Yeah, like he’s like the [bleep] Yeah, he’s like [bleep] General Patton. Not because of what actually happened at Zhazh necessarily, but because of the story that got told about it. And that’s the pattern you’re going to see repeated throughout this entire tale. The myth doing as much work as the reality. Well, myth myth becomes reality, yeah. in this so many times. Like the the story or the the [clears throat] biographer Remember when we did the American legends?

But even like yeah, it’s like or the Oh, it was like what the what’s his name? Like the British are coming. Uh-huh. And it’s like Paul Revere Paul Revere. There was actually like four homies, but like the legend of him became like the truth and that became fact. By 1988, the Soviets are packing up to leave Afghanistan. [bleep] this [bleep] And Bin Laden’s circle faces a question. What happens to this network? The money, the fighters, the training camps, once the war that built it is over. Do you just let it dissolve and do you just move on? Well, they didn’t. In August of 1988 at meetings held in Bin Laden’s own house in Peshawar on the 11th and the 20th of that month, according to handwritten minutes that were seized years later in a raid in Bosnia and eventually translated and published, this circle formally organizes what they’ve built.

The notes split the fighters into two tracks. Short-term volunteers sent to specific fronts and an elite group selected for something that the document literally calls Al-Qaeda al-Askariya. They’re probably like you’re willing to die for this, brother? Mhm. Like you’re willing to give it all? Mhm. One line from those founding minutes reads almost like a mission statement and I quote, “Al-Qaeda is basically an organized Islamic faction. Its goal will be to lift the word of God, to make his religion victorious.” By killing innocent people. Another record records the actual start date of Al-Qaeda as, and I quote, “The work of Al-Qaeda commenced on September 10th, 1988 with a group of 15 brothers.” Got it.

15 men. That’s it. That’s the entire founding roster of an organization that 13 years later [clears throat] will change the course of American history. Allegedly. Membership rules get written down, too. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So, you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you’d been searching for. You send a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you’re in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you’re looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer find more on Facebook.

Total commitment. Oh, yeah. It’s like, yeah, you’re life for the cause, brother. Obedience. Good manners. A personal referral from someone already trusted inside. Very mob-like. I mean, it’s it’s also like it’s very like it seems like a made man. This is a friend of mine. This is a friend of mine, not a friend of yours. But don’t you also like, I know we already did this episode, and we already had someone write in. I’m not I’m not trying to like Yeah. stir up [bleep] that we had [bleep] up, and we we actually fixed. But remember the um the uh Freemasons. Yeah. Like you have to be recommended.

Like you can’t you can’t just like waltz in. I don’t I don’t believe you can just waltz in and be like, “Yo, let me in.” it kind of makes sense. Sure, from like Yeah, you need a referral. Yeah, like someone to vouch that you’re a good dude. Yeah. But I’m just saying it’s interesting. Yeah. I’m not saying that that Yeah, yeah. I’m not trying to like talk [bleep] Um in a formal oath of loyalty called bay’ah, sworn to the leadership. And the name itself, al-Qaeda, means the base. No, like we’re the like we’re like the we’re the foundation. It’s the base. It’s uh But see, that’s also like [bleep] Like you’re also like you have to swear your loyalty to these dudes and like there’s no way that these dudes got it wrong.

Or like maybe they like mhm [bleep] up a translation or they’re like, “No, it’s like they’re they’re 100% right all the time.” So what that means is it’s the physical base, the training camps and the safe houses. But it’s also more literal, the database. And it’s the actual list of fighters Bin Laden had been keeping since the beginning of the war. So when you say al-Qaeda, it’s also like You remember like Mission Impossible? Like the naughty list? Exactly. It’s like like that’s the most important part about [clears throat] it. Yeah, it’s like It’s who who’s who’s on your You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who’s on who’s on the payroll? Yeah, or even in Marvel where he like leans in and he’s like, “Hail Hydra.” Exactly. [clears throat] Well, and what’s also like if you look it’s funny you bring up Marvel. I mean, that’s why in obviously they don’t portray this in the movies, but in the comics like Civil War is because of that. Yeah. It’s because the US government wanted all of the superheroes to be registered. So you know exactly who they are. Yeah. And they were like, “Fuck you. Yeah. I’ve been saving your [bleep] ass for like of Like now you’re going to be like some like registry?

Yeah. Mhm. And also it lean I mean well, you know, I’m not talking about that right now. It’s fine. It’s fine. I wasn’t going to bring up COVID and vaccine passports, but yeah. I mean yeah, then that was a You know I mean, registered Uh-huh. You’re register I mean even in in Nazi Germany in the 40s. Yeah. You had to be a registered Jewish business owner. Yep, 100%. Oh, yeah. And then That’s how they knew the [bleep] Take it out. back to the COVID thing. It’s like you were being told that you were killing people. Yeah. If you didn’t take the vaccine, you were responsible and they were openly advocating to shun you from Like I saw Did we post it or did I see another clip that had like it was like 60 different clips from news Oh yeah, we did.

And they’re like, “You should shun these people. Like you need like fire them. This” I’m like, “Wow.” Like looking at that now, you’re like, “Whoa.” Yeah. It’s a little wild. Holy [bleep] So Al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden actually didn’t agree on what the network should become. Al-Zawahiri wanted the mission to stay defensive. Oh, not like offensive. Yeah, to liberate occupied Muslim land. Nothing more. Oh, okay. I mean I’m not saying that’s okay, but it’s like it’s not like attack US. But Bin Laden is drifting towards something bigger. Something more permanent and pulling him in that direction is a new voice in his circle, an Egyptian surgeon named Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Jesus. He was born in 1951 in a respected Cairo family of doctors and scholars. And Ayman was radicalized as a teenager, formed an underground cell at 15 years old, was imprisoned and tortured in Egypt after the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Oh. And came out of that prison more committed to violence, not less. He becomes over time the ideological engine behind Osama bin Laden’s vision. The one arguing that the fight can’t just be local. It’s got to be global, baby. It has to be global. So, on November 24th, 1989, Abdullah Azzam and two of his sons, 17 and 14, were killed in a car bomb outside of a mosque in Peshawar.

Jesus. Nobody has ever claimed responsibility for this. So, it’s surprising. They’re always claiming [bleep] stuff. very important to note that on in in the sense of Al-Qaeda, it’s it’s um It’s Azzam and it’s bin Laden. Yeah. These are the two dudes heading up this And it’s a subset It’s a small subset of like It’s not like They’re the extremists. For sure. Exactly. But, it’s run by these two people. So, on November 24th, 1989, Azzam and his sons are killed in the car bomb. Yeah. So, and you can see it’s on Azzam. Yes. Now, but nobody has ever claimed responsibility. So, some people think bin Laden who killed them.

Yeah. And then obviously he wouldn’t claim responsibility cuz it would cause a rift in like the group that you’re forming. Yes. So, now he can probably use this to even radicalize them more. Like they’re trying to stop our cause. Look, they killed [bleep] Azzam. Yeah. So, he was considered like the teacher. And what’s strange is He was the one who went to the college in [bleep] Egypt and [bleep] Yeah. So, and what’s strange is or I don’t know I don’t want to call it strange, but like bin Laden in later videos and interviews and you know, all those things that he did, he would still revere him as like his mentor.

Yes, correct. But it doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t take him out. No, of course not. Well, you got to You got to keep up that PR and Well, no, he he martyred he martyred him. Yes, yeah. him. He made him a martyr. Yeah. I don’t know. Take that for what you will because we don’t know. He didn’t 100% kill him, you know. That I mean, that’s just like there’s a there’s a 82% chance that he killed him. 82%. So, standing near Bin Laden through much of this is another figure worth knowing because he’ll matter later on in the story, and his name’s Muhammad Atif. And he goes by the nickname and it’s so funny because it’s not really a nickname, but it’s Abu Asf al-Masri.

I mean, that’s a whole name. Yeah. He goes by the nickname his whole name. Honestly, we’re going [laughter] to go with the nick We’re going to go with the nickname Atif. Okay, perfect. Great. So, he’s uh a former Egyptian policeman turned militant. Atif becomes al-Qaeda’s military commander. Wait, wait. Can we just change the name to Abu? I like I like Abu better. It reminds me of Aladdin. Abu? So, he’s the trusted person that Bin Laden reportedly once told his own men, “Go and ask Abu who is more intelligent than me.” Oh, what? I’m surprised he would say that cuz most of these guys are so conceited that they’re the smartest person in the universe.

Yeah. So, the Soviets finish withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1989, and Bin Laden goes home to Saudi Arabia a war hero. All right. But in 1990, Iraq invades Kuwait. And Bin Laden makes his own offer to his own government, and he says, “Let me defend the kingdom with my Arab veterans, the men who just beat a superpower.” [clears throat] The Saudi royal family says no and instead invites the United States to base half a million troops on Saudi soil. Holy [bleep] It’s not a small number of troops. Yeah. To bin Laden, this is not a minor policy disagreement. To bin Laden, this is the central betrayal of his life.

Especially cuz like, you know, he was born in Saudi Arabia and like his dad was obviously a a big industry man there. An American army on the holiest ground in his faith, invited in by the government he did just risk everything for. He is enraged. He becomes increasingly outspoken, at odds with the monarchy, and in 1991 he leaves for Sudan, then run by an Islamist government under a cleric named Hassan al-Turabi. For the next 5 years, bin Laden lives openly in Khartoum, building roads, running farms, operating businesses, etc., while quietly bankrolling al-Qaeda and its training camps. Saudi Arabia strips him of his citizenship in ’94.

Okay. Under mounting pressure from Washington, Cairo, and the Sudan finally expels him in May of 1996. So, this is when he goes into the [bleep] caves? Yeah. Now, if you didn’t listen in the last episode, this is where the uncle comes. Oh, that that $600 $660 bucks. Yeah, it ties in. So, you remember the uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, KSM? Mhm. Yeah. $660 wire transfer Shawn was bringing in. While bin Laden is building his network in Sudan, KSM and his nephew are in the Philippines. And according to the FBI’s own account, they start sketching out something far more ambitious than a parking garage bomb. And it was a plan to blow up a dozen American airliners over the Pacific Ocean at the same time.

So, they wanted to blow up 12 planes flying from Eastern seaboard to Europe. Yeah? Investigators later named it Bojinka, a plan with multiple phases including one scheme to assassinate the Pope during a visit to Manila. Jesus. That plot gets broken up almost by accident in January of ’95 when a chemical fire breaks out in the Manila apartment where Yousef and accomplice are mixing explosives. And it forced them to flee and leaving the police to find a laptop full of the plan. Oh, [bleep] So, the plan’s off. Yeah, the plan is off. So, the following month Yousef, which is who’s responsible for the ’93 World Trade Center bombing, he gets captured in Pakistan.

In February of ’95, he disappears into a federal supermax, right? the Pakistani Yeah. Exactly, right? But, the 9/11 Commission would later write something worth sitting with, which is Yousef’s instant notoriety from the ’93 bombing is exactly what inspired his uncle to get deeply involved. The nephew lit the fuse. And the uncle picked up where he left off. And then got captured with Bin Laden. so in 1998, KSM formally joins Al-Qaeda. And his plan that he brings to the table would become 9/11. But, the plan was the 12 planes? That was the original That was the original plan with him before [clears throat] he was caught.

Okay. So now the new plan is So now he joins Al-Qaeda. He joins Al-Qaeda cuz that that plan went cuz they found the laptop with the plan on it. was arrested in And we’re like, “Okay, we can’t do that [bleep] plan anymore.” Yeah, yeah, true. Okay. So then KSM now goes, “I’m going to join Al-Qaeda.” Mhm. And we’re going to Probably because of the money. Oh, yeah, for sure. And the backing. Mhm. Right? Well, [clears throat] it’s it’s much more it seems like no more. Yeah, it’s like you got billions on the back end of that. Yeah, you got You got a lot of cash.

You got a Osama bin Laden. Yeah, pretty much. It seems like unlimited money. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like when you have billions of dollars it’s it’s it’s virtually unlimited money. Like it’s called that’s it is. So and before we keep going on this, there’s one more thread from the same stretch of the ’90s incidents that are happening with naming. In October of 1993, 18 American soldiers are killed in Somalia and that that became known as Black Hawk Down. Oh, yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Al-Qaeda later claimed its own operatives, including military commander Atif Mhm. Abu had trained the supposedly had trained the Somali fighters involved in order to do that incident.

Okay. Yeah, got it. But historians still debate how much of that is true because again, we go back to we go back to how everybody’s claiming to be [bleep] Oh, they’re always claiming. Yeah, it’s like I did it. Everyone wants like the notoriety. It’s like D.B. Cooper. Right. So kicked out of the Sudan, bin Laden returns to Afghanistan in May of 1996 right as a new power is sweeping in the country. The Taliban. The Taliban. Literally defined as the students. That’s what Taliban means. Oh, didn’t know that. A movement of religious seminary students turned fighters is taking Kabul under a one-eyed cleric named Mullah Mohammed Omar.

I love he’s got the one eye. Makes him like it’s much more like like he makes him legit. [snorts] Who a council of religious leaders religious [clears throat] leaders soon recognizes as Ammar al-Mu’minin commander of the faithful. Bin Laden strikes a deal with them. Sanctuary and freedom to run his camps in exchange for money and fighters. So now protected Bin Laden goes public for the first time. In August of ’96 he issues a document. Faxed. Hm. Oh, wow. Of all things he faxed it to a London newspaper and called it a declaration and this is quote declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.

Okay. His grievance from 6 years earlier the troops in Saudi Arabia is now a formal manifesto. Then on February 23rd, 1998 standing alongside Zawahiri Bin Laden announces is something called the World Islamic Front and issues what he what gets called a fatwa. A religious ruling or a declaration in essence that killing Americans civilian or military is now an individual religious duty for every Muslim who’s able to do it. What the [bleep] Damn. This is like [bleep] crazy. This is 98. This is so insane. Okay. So just a little quick pause. So obviously this is on the radar. It has to be. It has to be.

Somebody’s [bleep] radar. They’re like no no no no they’re just talking [bleep] Don’t worry about it. This wasn’t legitimate religious law. It was a political document wearing religious clothing. Who cares? It still looks But it worked exactly as intended as a call to arms to a global audience. They’re like if I for example if I were to say that right now I I would be arrested. Cuz I’d be like inciting violence. It’d be some sort of like [bleep] thing. I would yeah. And we live in a country with free speech. That same year Zawahiri’s own Egyptian Islamic Jihad the organization that had radicalized him back in Cairo in the Cairo prison begins formally merging its people and resources into Al-Qaeda.

A process that finishes completely in June of 2001. The timeline’s catching up. It’s almost like they’re all converging. Right? They’re all like The stars are aligning. And they’re all like like massing together almost like the downfall of Rome where the hordes are you know the the the the uh the hordes basically took over Rome but they they were all these tribes that were not a unified force. It’s also like you know the insane emperors who kind of [bleep] [bleep] up too but yes definitely. So The organizations one Saudi and one Egyptian, becoming a single machine right at the exact moment. Six months later, on the morning of August 7th, 1998, 8 years to the day since American troops landed in Saudi Arabia, Al-Qaeda proves it isn’t just issuing statements anymore.

Two truck bombs detonate within minutes of each other outside the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Holy [bleep] In Nairobi alone, the blast kills over 200 people. It’s also in the Africa, too. Like, what the [bleep] They’re like But it’s the US Embassy. Yeah, of course. Yeah. [clears throat] Um so, in Nairobi alone, the blast kills over 200 people and injures roughly 4,000. Holy [bleep] I didn’t even know idea about that. No. All told, 224 people were killed. 12 Americans and more than 4,500 wounded. And the overwhelming majority of the dead are African civilians who had nothing to do with it. Yeah, they’re just over there.

Yeah. And many of them were Muslims themselves. Oh, wow. See, that’s what like it’s just so senseless. This is Al-Qaeda’s first mass casualty strike on American targets. It’s a body count. The United States responds within 2 weeks with cruise missile strikes on camps in Afghanistan and pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. That November, the US formally indicts Bin Laden and 21 others. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that’s new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you’ve had open for weeks.

Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There’s no place like Chrome. Check responses, set up required compatibility and availability varies. 18-plus. Yeah, cuz that was 1998. There’s no question that they know. Now. Yeah, like now it’s like we know. Yeah. So, not many people know this, but um Al-Qaeda actually tried again at the New Year’s celebration in New York City? 2000. The the New Year’s the the ball drop? Yeah, the Y2K. Whatever. And it’s called the Millennium plot. And it targeted LAX. Mhm. And it was also trying to target an American destroyer called the the USS Cole. The airport plan collapsed when a jittery bomber named Ahmad Ressam gets stopped at the US-Canada border on December 14th, 1999 with a trunk full of explosives.

After a suspicious customs agent decides to search the car. The attack on the destroyer fails for a much stranger reason. The small boat carrying the explosives is loaded so heavily that it just sinks. Oh, wow. It sinks before it even gets Can you imagine to the target? Can you imagine like more? They’re like, no, it cannot be that. Like, is it a pontoon boat? We can’t We don’t have enough space. And they’re like, no, load that [bleep] up. But they tried again 2 years later uh in 2000. They went with a lighter boat. And they pulled up alongside an American destroyer called the USS Cole.

And it was refueling in the harbor of Yemen. And two suicide bombers detonated against the hull. The blast tears a 40-ft hole in the side of the United States warship. Killing 17 American soldiers and wounding nearly 40 more. I just don’t How do you How do you get a boat up next to a destroyer? Like, aren’t there like Well, cuz it was docked. It was gassing up. gassing up, yeah. Okay. Now you say that, that makes sense. Okay. I was going to say like, wouldn’t they be like, “Oh, yeah. If you’re out in the closer, we’ll just kill you.” Well, it is by any measure a stunning hit, a handful of men in a rubber boat crippling a half-a-billion-dollar Navy destroyer.

And it happens, we know now, while Bin Laden and KSM are already deep into planning something far larger, something that had been by this point in motion for years. You know what this reminds me of? Oh my god. And we’ll obviously get into this, but it’s like [bleep] Pearl Harbor, bro. A little bit, yeah. It’s very It’s like so eerily similar because it’s like They got spies on the They know, but like you let it like They’re trying to figure out the weak points, like all that [bleep] it’s also it’s like How do you get the American people to like okay this? Right. You need to have like a mass casualty event in order for them to like be a so up in arms.

It’s like, “Grab your torch and pitchforks.” Cuz like if you look, like I I I’m going to get ahead of myself here. I’m already getting ahead of my I’ll just stop now. Well, okay. It’s okay. We got a little bit more. Yeah. It’s a bit of a longer episode, but it’s it’s We’re getting there, guys. We’re getting there. So, while Bin Laden is issuing declarations and Al-Qaeda is bombing embassies and warships, a much quieter operation is already crawling through American flight schools. And it’s worth slowing down all the way to here because this is the part of the story where you can actually watch the plot forming in real time, such as a Florida strip mall.

Mhm. And this is the lead-in to 9/11. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah? Yeah, they were training here for sure. Yeah, yeah. And this is the part that I I don’t think that many of us know. That they were uh training to like we’re going to go over the next the next 30 40 minutes, we’re going to go over like The detail, yeah, yeah. the details of this. And I just don’t think that many people, even the younger people, know this story. Yeah, true. Which is that like the specifics of where they were in America training to bomb 9/11. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

It’s like right around the corner. Mhm. So, in June of 2000, two men landed in the United States and they make their way to a small flight school on the Venice Municipal Airport in Venice, Florida. Which is like hour-ish, hour and a hour, whatever, half away from us. Yeah. One of them should burn that [bleep] place down. One of them is Mohamed Atta. The other is Marwan al-Shehhi. More than 80% of Huffman’s students at the time are foreign nationals. So, two more foreign men signing up This is like totally kosher. They don’t have Yeah, it seems normal. The latest pile of my paycheck right here.

Like, [bleep] yeah. What does register in in the interviews later, it came up, was how unpleasant they are. Oh, they’re like, [bleep] you, white devil. Mhm. Their instructor, a name a man named Theory Liclow complains to the school’s chief flight instructor that the pair won’t follow instructions and have miserable attitudes. Purcell seriously considers kicking them out of the program. Office manager Susan Hall later says she started calling Atta the little terrorist. Oh my god. While he was a a paying student she says, “I just didn’t like the aura he gave off.” Well, it’s also it’s like you have the you know, it’s like you have the right to refuse service anyone, you know?

It’s like someone’s a dick, you don’t have to like “Oh, they’re paying.” So what? Like, here’s your refund. Like, the [bleep] out. Yeah. Another instructor, Mark Mazzetti, put it simply, and I quote, “Atta had big problems with authority.” If they’re white. Except for Bin Laden. Yeah, I’m like Purcell testified under oath at the 2006 trial that Atta and Al-Shehhi once stalled a small training plane on a taxiway at Miami International Airport and simply abandoned it there. Left it sitting on an active taxiway at one of the busiest airports in Florida and walked away. Just like leave it there, [bleep] it. The FAA called the school and chewed them out over the phone.

And they still let them continue at the school. Yeah. Nobody ever went and questioned Atta or Al-Shehhi about it. Purcell said the instructors breathed a, quote, “collective sigh of relief” when the two finally finished their training and left for good. Like, why did they not have like any balls back then? Like, just [bleep] kick them out. Like, dude. Yeah, but I mean, you know, they probably wanted that money. [bleep] I know it. I mean it’s the old adage, right? Customer’s always right. Mhm. Well, that’s that’s That’s not true. That’s not true. I know. No, that’s not true. It’s not right. Because like, imagine that you’re an expert, right?

You’re like, “Hey, look, like I’m an expert of uh laying concrete. And I know like if I do it in a certain way, like if I do it this way, the way that you want it, it’s going to crack [clears throat] and you’re going to be upset.” And they’re like, “No, I want it this way.” And you’re like but it’s it’s You don’t want it to be cracked, but you’re telling me to do it in a way that’s going to crack. Like, they’re not right. It’s it’s your job to enlighten the customer. Yeah. Especially uh in a training customer scenario. Exactly. They’re not a flying a They’re not like giving them a restaurant Yeah, we’re not giving them a Jamba Juice.

Yeah. Yeah. No, they’re like flying planes. Yeah. A British student named Anne Greaves, who trained on the same plane, remembered being told by an instructor that Atta was Saudi royalty, and Al-Shehhi was his bodyguard. Mhm. She didn’t [clears throat] buy it. She said, quote, “Royalty usually had manners.” And I felt these two certainly didn’t have any. I mean, that is true. Royalty typically does have manners. Mhm. They’re very PR-y. Yeah. Like, it’s super PR-y. For a stretch, the two even rented a room from a Huffman bookkeeper named Charlie Voss and his wife, Drusilla, who eventually asked them to leave. Drusilla later said, and I quote, “They gave me the impression they didn’t care much for women.” At one point, they moved down the road to Jones Aviation in Sarasota, where an instructor there said the pair were rude and aggressive, and sometimes even fought to take over the controls during the lessons.

These guys sound great. They sound ideal. Kick them out! Seriously. So, down the street from Huffman at the Florida Flight Training Center, a different man was training under a different reputation entirely. His name was Ziad Jarrah. And Ziad Jarrah would end up being the pilot on United 93. Yeah. The Lebanese member of what investiga- investigators would later call the Hamburg cell, was by most accounts kind, sociable, and an occasional drinker. He kept a German girlfriend, which is wild, because like, the Muslims don’t drink. Yeah, that’s true. Mhm. He kept a girlfriend back in Germany and called or emailed her almost every day. Of all the 19 men who would eventually board those planes on 9/11, Jarrah stayed the most connected to the people who loved him right up until the very end.

Hold on to that because we’re going to bring that up. Yeah. It’s also like when you like think don’t bring attention to yourself like stop being a dick to [bleep] like just like be low-key. I don’t know. Like dog, the [bleep] Okay, now out in Arizona a fourth man was struggling in a way that should have set off alarm systems that didn’t. Hani Hanjour had been drifting through American flight training on and off since ’91. Mhm. The [bleep] years is like He picked up a commercial flight uh certificate in April of ’98 or ’99 despite by every account barely being able to fly. Yet, he somehow passed.

After 9 years. [bleep] flight training In early 2001 an operation manager at Phoenix Flight School called Jet Tech, a woman named Peggy Chevrette called the FAA on Hanjour at least on three separate occasions. This guy is so sad. And said, and I quote, “I couldn’t believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had.” Great. I mean, you got to be really bad if like If they’re like, “Oh my god, even like the the receptionist is like he is ass.” Mhm. He’s not good at this. But, nobody told the FBI. Or they did and they just didn’t want to hear it.

Yeah. A Jet Tech vice president would later tell CBS News after 9/11, [clears throat] and I quote, “We did everything we were supposed to do.” Of course, we have no responsibility. We didn’t see anything sketch about this guy. We followed the SOP. Yeah. Listen. Government paid me. I got to take it. And then there’s one who almost certainly wasn’t even supposed to be on the planes at all and is considered the 20th hijacker who never There was 19 hijackers on 9/11. He was the 20th. Bin Laden? No. His name that was Zacarias Moussaoui. And he’s sometimes referred as the 20th hijacker. Though there’s no solid evidence he was ever actually slotted in the operation.

In August of 2001, he walked into Pan Am International in Minnesota and paid $6,300 in cash for lessons on a simulator. He had no aviation background whatsoever. That’s a lot of money in cash back in those days. It is. And he tells his his instructors that he wanted to learn how to fly the plane. Just not how to take off or how to land. need to land. I just want to fly. It became such an obviously strange request that the school called the FBI within 3 days. Oh my god. Okay, so this is now like the fifth time the FBI has been alerted. Yeah. But he was arrested.

So he was arrested in August of 2001. Mhm. Okay. And so he was he’s called the 20th Okay. Yeah, he was going to make it. So So he’s he’s staying he’s staying in Yeah. Okay. So in theory, there could have been a fifth plane. Okay. Yeah. [sighs] Now, here’s the part of the story that genuinely unsettles people once they hear it. Because it doesn’t quite fit the picture. We tend to imagine men on a religious mission, disciplined, uh stoic. You know what I mean? Like religious like some trained They’re soldier. Yeah, dialed in. up into the end. But that is very demonstrably not what the records and interviews show.

No. About 12 hours after the attacks, FBI agents walked into Schuckum’s Oyster Bar in Hollywood, Florida. And they showed the staff a couple of photographs. The night manager, Tony Amos, and a bartender named Patricia, both said they recognized the man in the photo. And his name was Mohamed Atta. Same guy that we had talked about. Yeah. The 20th? Yeah. It No, no, not the 20th. Oh. But like uh Another dude. One of the original training guys. Yeah. Okay. And they showed photos of him, and they said, “We recognize this guy as a customer who’d come in with Marwan al-Shehhi a few nights earlier, sometime around September 7th and 8th.” Okay.

According to Amos and Idrissi, Atta drank five vodka orange juices. Once again, the Muslims don’t drink alcohol. This is wild. Al-Shehhi had a rum and Coke. When the manager questioned whether they could actually cover the roughly $48 tab, Atta reportedly snapped back and said, and I quote, “Of course I can pay the bill. I’m an airline pilot.” I’m Frank Abagnale. Yeah. [laughter] Of course I can pay it. Can I cash you a check? Okay, then there’s Vegas. But you know what’s strange about that, and maybe [laughter] like I know we’re going fast through this, but it’s just a lot of stuff. No, no, that’s I’m not worried about how fast it is.

I’m like I’m at another place. I just want to add this to it. So, so Sarasota, Venice is on the west coast. Hollywood is on the other side. Mhm. Close to Miami, basically. Yep. That’s right. So, just weird. How What Why are they over there now? I don’t know the answer to that. Yeah. Yeah. No [bleep] doesn’t no where you want. I mean, no one cares. wild. Yeah, Florida’s like, [bleep] Florida man. You want to learn how to fly? [bleep] it. And we’re broke. We need money. Look up Florida man on Instagram. [laughter] So, then there’s Vegas. This one is fully confirmed by the 9/11 Commission.

It’s not a bar employees memory. It’s actually documented. Okay. At least five hijackers, including Atta, Al-Shehhi, Jarrah, and Hanjour made repeated trips to Vegas between May and August of 2001. Okay. Several of them flying cross country first class and landing there with no obvious reason. So, they got backing now. Atta himself rented a car, spent time at an internet cafe near the university. No, they’re probably in first class cuz they’re trying to observe like Oh, yeah. Close Yeah, close to the concrete. Yeah. He checked into an Econolodge that sat almost in the shadow of a local FBI office. Meaning it was across the street. Mhm.

He hung a do not disturb sign on the door, stayed two nights in a room facing the Stratosphere. His rental car came back with 110 mi on it. Okay. On August 13th, less than a month before 9/11, Atta, Hanjour, and a third attack hijacker named Nawaf al-Hazmi all met up in Vegas. Investigators of the FBI believe it was the final round of the meeting. Yeah, it’s also like, one last hurrah, boys. Mhm. The 9/11 Commission’s own final report is almost strangely flat about it. Meaning, beyond the city’s reputation for welcoming tourists, we’ve seen, they said, and I quote, “We have seen no credible evidence explaining why they went to Vegas.” Okay.

And it seems like just to meet up. Easy to hide, too. Like there’s Yeah, it’s like you’re in the middle of Why would you go from Miami, San Diego, Minnesota, why would you go meet in Vegas? I think maybe cuz Vegas is such a eclectic and like everyone’s like everyone’s kind of sus there. You’re just like whatever. Whereas like yeah, you just blend in with the rest of the society. You kind of stick out like a sore thumb cuz like you’re like you’re not Hispanic? Not a what? I am. Like yeah. So here’s one of the theories. Yeah. It’s the story that gets repeated constantly but rests on one source.

So we don’t know if it’s fully true. Okay. The Pink Pony Strip Club, the club’s manager named John Capp told the FBI and later reporters that men he believed were hijackers spent two to $300 each on lap dances and drinks, paid by a credit card, and that one of them left a copy of the Quran behind at the bar. After getting after getting a [bleep] lap dance at the titty, you’re going to leave the Quran behind? show this witness makes it seem as though Vegas was their last hurrah. Yeah. Does that make sense? Like Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Yeah, it’s like Go live It’s like his like bachelor party.

Yes. Correct. Yeah. So and here’s some of the witnesses’ statements. Capp even claimed one of them had said something like, quote, “Wait till tomorrow. America is going to see bloodshed.” Jesus. But no second witness ever came forward on that to corroborate that story. Yeah. Yeah. Like just yeah. And nobody does anything. It’s like [laughter] nobody’s like Well, they said Well, I witnessed this This is like I’m going to bleed and die. [laughter] You know, you’re just like people say [bleep] Like you’re not going to take it seriously. I’m going to [bleep] blow this place up. [laughter] But yeah, she’s like you got to exactly. She’s like one of the so beyond that though you’ll find claims about hijackers hiring prostitutes near Boston dropping a thousand dollars on champagne at a Palm Beach bar.

I mean they were going back to what you said like you think that they’re so devoted and like you know, yeah, yeah, exactly. But they’re breaking all of it. Brainwashing. They’re like God will be cool if you do this [bleep] before you die for him. Yeah, trust me. He told me. But again and I just want to like point out that these are anonymous sources that were tip lines into the FBI. So I don’t know if it’s what was actually true about it and like like Arab men basically like it wasn’t it was never confirmed it was them. Also and it’s after 9/11. Yeah, so you never [bleep] know right on I mean everyone was a terrorist at that point.

Remember DB Cooper? I mean we always go back to that. After the fact oh it was me. I did it. So when a reporter once asked 9/11 commissioner Richard Benveniste on the record why Atta was supposedly quote snorting cocaine and frequenting strip bars. His actual answer was and I quote you know, that’s a heck of a question. [laughter] Funny you asked that. I have no answer. So we don’t know the answer to it. It’s like Wolf of Wall Street. I do not recall. It’s in some documentaries and it’s in some movies and it’s in some some things, but we don’t have You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. [sighs] If you want the single most maddening so close story in the 9/11 story, that’s the preamble of it, it isn’t a bar tab or a Vegas hotel room. It’s a rental house in San Diego. In May of 2000, two of the hijacker hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi Khalid al-Mihdhar, rented rooms in Lemon Grove, California, a home of a man named Abdussattar Shaikh Shaikh. Shaikh was a respected figure in San Diego’s Muslim community. He was also and had been since 1994 a paid FBI informant run by a handler known internally by the code name Stan. So, is that yet another that is like the third [bleep] time the FBI is like clearly knows what’s going on.

On the radar, yeah. So, Stan did mention in casual conversation with his FBI handler that he had a couple of new boarders. He never gave their names. He never mentioned that they were taking flight lessons in Southern California. Congress’s own joint inquiry later concluded in fairly blunt language that the informant’s contact with those two hijackers if had been properly followed up with, would present perhaps the entire intelligence community’s best chance to unravel the 9/11 plot before it happened. Great. That’s so great. Shaikh himself didn’t realize who his boarders had actually been until he heard their names on the radio 3 days after 9/11. And he later said, and I quote, “I had to stop my car.

My whole body was numb when I found out. Jesus Christ. There’s one more story worth flagging here, even though it’s genuinely disputed. A USDA loan officer in Florida named Janelle Bryant told ABC News years later that a man who spelled his name Atta Abu came into her office around the spring of 2000 asking for a a loan of roughly $650,000 to buy a small plane he wanted to convert into a crop duster complete with a large chemical tank. [bleep] [bleep] She said he got angry when the bank turned him down and that his eyes lingered on an aerial photo of DC on her office office wall and then he mentioned mentioned Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden by name.

Jesus. It’s a striking story and she passed a polygraph test actually about it. But the date she gives predates Atta’s confirmed document entry into the US. So there’s some confusion about if it’s a good if it’s a good lead, etc. But this is also like years later, right? After 9/11 you said? Uh yeah, yeah, correct. Yeah. And now two stories on the night of April 26, 2001 at around 11:00 Mohamed Atta is driving a red We’ve heard this name many times. Mohamed Atta is Yeah, [bleep] [bleep] Yeah. He was driving a 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix through a Broward County Sheriff’s traffic checkpoint. Broward County? Broward County, that’s right.

Broward County Sheriff’s traffic checkpoint That’s literally next door. You don’t know your own county. Everything is happening right now. [clears throat and snorts] Tell me words I’m spouting out right now. My bad. My bad. It’s true. It’s true. And all the name pronunciations difficult. [clears throat] Yeah. So, he was on he was going through a traffic checkpoint on University Drive in Tamarac, Florida. He gets pulled over. Good. He hands over his international driver’s license. No one cares. It’s not enough. Yeah, like no one cares. It’s not enough. He’s cited for driving without a valid Florida license, which in Florida at the time is actually a criminal offense, not just a fix-it ticket.

He’s ordered to appear in court on May 28th. He never shows. A week later, a bench warrant goes out for his arrest. Good. Warrant never served. Then on July 5th, 2001, a little over 2 months before the attacks, a Delray Beach police officer stops Atta again. Jesus. This time for speeding, a few miles from where he lives. That officer has no idea there’s an outstanding warrant sitting in a different county system because we didn’t have Oh, really? They didn’t have computers or anything where they could like look it up, yeah? He lets Atta go with a warning. Florida finally suspends Atta’s license altogether on August 23rd, 2001, 19 days before the attack.

Jeez. And by then, it’s a formality, nobody’s tracking. And in almost unbearable footnote, a Broward County Clerk and Supervisor named Renee Gaskin later recalled a woman dressed in what she described as Arab garb coming into the courthouse claiming to be Atta’s wife trying to clear his name and his tickets. Around what would turn out to be the exact window of time Atta was flying on 9/11. Really? That’s so strange. Why why would she do that if he’s already I don’t know. Okay. I don’t get any of it. I don’t understand Like I’m like trying to like piece it together in my mind and I’m like what?

So we only have a couple more stories here and then So then there’s Ziad Jarrah. And we talked about him. He was the the pilot of United 93, yeah. Yeah. He was the sociable one. The one who called his girlfriend almost every day. Yeah, that German girlfriend, yeah. Yeah. Just after midnight on September 9th, 2001, 2 days before a Maryland State Trooper named Joseph Catalano clocks a red rental car doing 90 miles an hour in a 60. That’s reckless operation. Northbound on Interstate 95 in Maryland. Close to the Delaware line. He pulls the car over. It’s Jarrah. Catalano’s own dash cam captures the shop and you can see it on video of the dash cam Yeah.

catching it. Yeah? The tape was released publicly. And on the audio, you can hear the trooper’s routine traffic stop happening in real time. Short answers. Virginia address confirmed. License and registration checked out. Mhm. He gets a $270 speeding ticket and drives off. You’re free to go, brother. FBI isn’t doing [bleep] Maryland State Police Superintendent reviewing the tape afterwards said, and I quote, “Nothing evident that gave any hint of what Jar was about to be involved in. Yeah, I mean I think maybe if he I mean Yeah, if you’re that cop it’s like Yeah. What do you What do you I mean what do you can you do?

Like Yeah. Probably giving him a break like okay, I’m not I’m not going to give you this reckless operation like I’ll hook you up and he was the personable one so he’s probably like nice to him. Yeah. Like So later that same day he called his parents in Lebanon. He tells them that he’ll see them on September 22nd for his cousin’s wedding. He tells them he loves them. And that’s the last time they ever talked to him. They ever talked to him. Now before we close this out because you know we can’t let an episode go by without sitting in the gray areas for a minute.

So let’s talk about gray areas this whole episode. [laughter] So let’s talk about what’s what’s actually solid here and what isn’t because this story has more soft spots than you’d expect from something that was so well documented. Oh yeah. So we start with the founding date itself. We told you the September 10th, 1988 15 brothers straight from the captured minutes. That’s the best supported version and it’s the one most serious researchers land on. But just so you know it’s not the only version out there. An Al-Qaeda defector named Jamal al-Fadil who later testified for the US government described a separate founding meeting happening later in 1989.

Some historians think that’s a second more formal refounding rather than a contradiction. Or just another meeting. It didn’t necessarily have to be the founding meeting. It could have just been like a normal meeting. That’s right. Then there’s al-Azzam’s murder. We told you the car bomb. You know in the in the car 82% did that Osama did that. And it’s unsolved. And that’s true and it stayed true for over three decades, but the guessing game around who did it has never stopped. Some point at Egyptian intelligence, worried about Azzam’s growing influence. Some point at Israeli services. Yeah, classic massage. It’s like [bleep] just nuking people. And and some point at inside bin Laden’s own orbit.

I mean, it it definitely could have been one of those like especially since that guy was like the brains of the operation. Like he was the most learned, he was the most educated. You think that oh, if we take him out like they’ll [bleep] fold up. Mhm. So, it’s possible. Yeah. Uh and one more closer to the ground level of tonight’s story, when we told you about the Shuckums and the Pink Pony, we told you who confirmed it and how. But, it’s worth being honest that most of those identifications happened after FBI agents walked in and showed the photo. Yeah. Usually, the same handful of now famous mugshots that were already circulating at that time.

That doesn’t make the witnesses liars, No, it’s just but it’s possible, just as a point, it’s possible that the memory and media saturation were tangled together. And if you could remember, I mean, I you know, I was 17. I don’t know how old you guys were when 9/11 happened. Mhm. And I just remember being mad. I was pissed. I was pissed. Right? Like there was just mad. Yeah. Yeah, I was I was 11. Yeah. You were 11? I was 11. I remember I remember the same thing. That’s a baby. [bleep] [laughter] God damn it. I left work. I was in the bathroom. I was Yes, I was at work.

I was in social studies class when it happened, and we watched it on the TV. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. What when the first when the first tower got hit? They were like and this class stopped, and then the like the teacher got a call, and then turn on the TV and then we watched it. Like we literally watched it. Like we watched the they happen. Yeah. Yeah. That’s not so at that time though we were very much like I don’t want to say everybody’s enraged. We didn’t know a lot about like Al-Qaeda. No. No. No. You just knew someone was attacking. We didn’t know all that [bleep] No.

We were definitely influenced by the media. It It was on TV nonstop, the radio, everything. So So the only point I’m bringing that up is that it’s it’s one witness Well, it’s also the story of them at strip clubs doing cocaine, doing shots Well, there’s also a reason There’s also a reason why I’m witness testimony is the least credible. I know. Because like you are it’s easily to You’re easily influenced. Yeah. Like you want to do something good. Like yes, it was them. Like yeah. So here’s where we leave it tonight. In barely a decade, a network that started as 15 men in a house in Peshawar, a fighter database, basically leftover from a war that was already ending, and has become something entirely different.

It has a sanctuary in Afghanistan. It has an ideology dressed up as a religious law. Mhm. It has a body count on three continents. It has an uncle who picked up his nephew’s unfinished business and turned it into a centerpiece of a plan years in the making. And by September 10th, 2001, it has 19 men in place in waiting. Mohammed Atta is in his hotel room in Boston. Ziad Jarrah is a few hundred miles south in Newark with a speeding ticket in his glove box from two nights earlier and a promise to his parents about a wedding he will never attend. Mhm. Hani Hanjour, the man a flight instructor once said had no business holding a commercial license, is going over what he does remember about flying a Boeing 757.

[snorts] In Sarasota, in Vegas, in a rental house in San Diego, the ordinary props of the last 2 years, the abandoned Cessna, the vodka and orange juice, the do not disturb sign at the Econolodge, a landlord who had no idea his tenant’s whole life was a cover story have all quietly finished their mission. Tonight, all 19 men go to sleep within a few hours drive of four different airports that they would depart from. And by tomorrow morning, they will have turned four commercial airliners full of ordinary people who made the complete reasonable decision to fly somewhere on a Tuesday into the deadliest weapon ever used on American soil.

So, right now, tonight in this story, it’s September 10th. The towers are standing. The Pentagon is just a building. A field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania is just a field. And somewhere in Lebanon, Ziad Jarrah’s parents are still looking forward to the wedding on the 22nd. [clears throat] None of them know yet what the next 8 hours are going to cost. We do. And we’re going to walk through every single minute of it. A four-part series for the 25th anniversary of 9/11, starting with the morning itself where the hijackers were sitting, what the the said on the phone calls, what the towers looked like from the ground and from the air, and everything else that happened afterwards.

Because there is a staggering amount of after that most people never learn. So, next episode we are going to start 9/11. Oh my god. Wow. I mean, so I think Cliffhanger. Yeah, I mean, wow. I mean, yeah, I think I think like here’s a good point for us to just kind of like let that resonate. Yeah. We’ll continue more on the after hours and just to kind of like spitball where we’re at before we get into like the real juice. And yeah. You know what it is? It’s [bleep] heavy. Oh, it’s heavy. Oh, yeah. we went through a lot of data and a lot of names and a lot of stories and stuff like that, but it’s so [bleep] heavy.

It’s so hard to be like take our comedy podcast and like make it like a a joke. No, especially since this is like the it’s the most devastating thing that’s happened to our country. Yeah, and we lived it. Yeah, we were we were there. like [bleep] JFK Yeah, or even like World War II it’s generations past. This is like people who are listening to this lived it. Especially our age demographic, too. It’s like they were we were Yeah, it’s not like Yeah. 15-year-olds are listening to this. It’s it’s the people who were like doing [bleep] when this happened. Yeah. Like you guys said, like you guys were at work.

I mean, I was in social studies class. Like I I [bleep] remember it. Yeah, like exactly. Like the exact moment where he was like, “Class is over. We’re putting this on the TV.” Yeah. So, before we sign off, though, did you guys I mean, obviously like lame question, but like you know Did you guys know all of this going into it or or is there more data that you learned that you’re like okay well maybe this puts it into a little bit of a different perspective? I didn’t know like the the whole Osama origins, you know? But the the story about the the hijackers I I knew, you know, I knew about that cuz I already had looked into that.

And I the thing is like as we went over just in this episode alone there’s so many red flags in terms of like they knew something was going on. Like the FBI was alerted like [bleep] five times. Like oh there’s some weird shit’s going on like we should look into this like there was warning signs all over the place. It’s not like this was like out of the [bleep] blue. Like we knew like we knew that they were starting [bleep] It’s almost like the the actual downside of of the American political system is that yes it’s great that we always transition to new leaders you know what I mean?

But they also drop the ball Yeah they drop the ball on on what was going on before, you know what I mean? And so like we we transfer from Clinton to Bush Yeah and so there’s got to be a fallout of or like falling through the cracks of Yeah because they have all new staff Yeah exactly. And [snorts] then they’re they’re not focused all all they’re focused on is getting reelected. And like getting [bleep] you know like oh like we’re worried about like approval ratings and like it’s it’s not it’s like it’s all like that’s all they give a [bleep] about. Yeah. Well there you go guys guys that’s goys.

Uh that’s the the rise of Al-Qaeda. um It’s heavy. I don’t know what to say. It’s heavy and but it is what it is and and sometimes you have to face up to what is heavy on what’s happening in in the world. We put up the pictures of the hijackers on Patreon. You can check that out. Yeah, absolutely. But for Patreons, we’ll continue this topic a little bit in the after hours. Yeah, and hopefully lighten it up a a bit. Maybe Erica can tell a joke or two. [laughter] Lighten the mood. It’s a little dark and and drab right now. But stay tuned because next week is going to be the first episode of 9/11.

Yes. That’s the day. And we’ve been talking about this for 2 and 1/2 years. So it’s time. It’s time. But as always my friends, we love you and nighty night. What’s up guys? I hope you enjoyed this episode. I want to invite you to join us for our Patreon. So what that is is an exclusive membership. We’re going to be able to get exclusive discounts like 15% off on all our merch and you won’t have to listen to these ads No more ads ever again. Plus you’re going to be able to access our minis episodes. So that’s something that nobody else is going to get access to.

They’re just short podcast episodes with about 15 minutes long or so. So cool, you know, extra content that you’re going to get access to. I know all these other suckers waiting for next Tuesday. They’re going to hit some minis up, you know, fill the void. That’s right. Instead of you know, having to wait the rest of the peasants for the next episode. [laughter] All you got to do is go to patreon.com/theconspiracypodcast and you’ll find us. There are many different levels there all giving different amounts of content. That’s right. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Nighty night.