Summary of 9/11 Commission Report
The publicly released version of the 9/11 Commission Report spans 567 pages, including 138 pages of notes, 21 pages of appendices, and 13 chapters spanning 428 pages.
The full text of the report can be found here, here, or here (PDF).
This is a fairly in-depth summary of the Report. Interesting endnotes are reproduced in part wherever they occur so readers can try to obtain copies of source material. Some sources are government documents, so a Freedom of Information Act request may be necessary. All Internet links are reproduced at the end of each chapter summary.
Chapter-by-chapter Summaries
1. "We Have Some Planes"
Inside the Four Flights
1
Improvising a Homeland Defense
14
National Crisis Management
35
2. The Foundation of the New Terrorism
A Declaration of War
pg. 47 From their Afghan base, on February 1998, 40-year-old Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, fugitive Egyptian physician Ayman al Zawahiri, and three other unnamed [in the report] Islamist extremists signed and published a fatwa in an Arabic newspaper distributed in London. In it, they said that the killing of Americans was the "individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." None of those who signed the document were technically qualified to issue fatwas, as none of them was a scholar of Islamic law. Bin Laden had also issued similar declarations in the past, including a self-styled 1996 fatwa in which he praised attacks against the United States and claimed that U.S. forces had left Somalia in utter defeat. In an ABC-TV interview in May 1998, bin Laden pointed to the departure of U.S. military forces from Somalia and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan nearly a decade earlier as evidence that a group of dedicated Muslims can overcome a superpower. He also warned that "If the present injustice continues..., it will inevitably move the battle to American soil."
Bin Laden's Appeal in the Islamic World
pg. 48 Bin Laden appeals to Muslims by using symbols of Islam's past greatness, promising to restore that greatness to people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. "His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources--Islam, history, and the region's political and economic malaise." He also registers complaints that are common in the middle east by speaking against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, home of the two prime Muslim holy sites; the suffering of the Iraqi people due to American sanctions and bombings; and American support of Israel.
Islam contains three key elements: The Qur'an, revelations given by the archangel Gabriel to Muhammad, the last and greatest of the prophets; the Hadith, a recording by contemporaries of Muhammad's sayings and deeds, and the Sharia, a code of Muslim law derived from the first two elements. The religion is divided into two main branches, the Sunni and Shia. After the death of Muhammad, his contemporaries served as the leaders (caliphs) of the Muslim community (Ummah). With time, that ceased to be possible and a schism developed over who would lead. The Shia argued that only direct descendants of Muhammad could be caliphs; the Sunnis argued that anybody who met the other qualifications should be eligible. Sunnis are predominant in the world overall, but the Shia are dominant in Iran. The Caliphate as a formal Sunni institution survived until 1924.
Today, the century after Muhammad's revelations is widely seen as a golden age of Islam, with the religion's astoundingly rapid expansion throughout the Middle East and parts of Africa and Europe. Bin Laden and others like him attribute the loss of this greatness to corruption and sin. "The extreme Islamist version of history blames the decline from Islam's golden age on the rulers and people who turned away from the true path of their religion, thereby leaving Islam vulnerable to encroaching foreign powers eager to steal their land, wealth, and even their souls."
Bin Laden's worldview relies heavily on the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian member of the Muslim Brotherhood executed in 1966 for trying to overthrow the government. Qutb claimed that the world was rife with sin and infidelity, which he called jahiliyya, the term for the ignorant condition of the world before the revelations of Muhammad. He further said that humans can choose only from either strict Islam or jahiliyya, God or Satan, with no middle ground. Bin Laden takes this idea and associates it with the United States, which he says attacked Islam and is the puppetmaster of governments that Bin Laden says do not live up to his standard of faithfulness. He and others like him use the West as a scapegoat for the social and economic malaise experienced by many countries in the Middle East. Bin Laden argued that the U.S. was the "head of the snake" of the Middle East's problems.
The Rise of Bin Laden and al Qaeda (1988–1992)
55 The Afghan jihad which galvanized Islamic militancy in the area originated from the late 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to prop up a weak Communist government that had come to power in 1978. The invasion drew young Muslims from around the world to Afghanistan, including the 23-year-old Osama bin Laden. "Though he took part in at least one actual battle, he became known chiefly as a person who generously helped fund the anti-Soviet jihad." Bin Laden recognized the need for a large organization to funnel money and recruits to the mujahideen. He joined with Abdullah Azzam, whose sermons on tape had inspired bin Laden when he was a student at Saudi Arabia's Abdul Aziz University, in creating Mektab al Khidmat. The Report says that though the United States and Saudi Arabia had funneled billions of dollars through Pakistan (which helped train rebels and distribute arms) to the Afghan rebels, Bin Laden and his comrades had their own sources of support.
Moscow announced in April 1988 that Soviet forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan, which left Bin Laden's and Azzam's MAK without a purpose. They agreed to establish a related group that would serve as a base for future jihad; the group came to be called Al Qaeda. "This organization's structure included as its operating arms an intelligence component, a military committee, a financial committee, a political committee, and a committee in charge of media affairs and propaganda. It also had an Advisory Council (Shura) made up of Bin Laden's inner circle." [Note 25. For a particularly useful insight into the evolution of al Qaeda-written by an early Bin Laden associate, Adel Batterjee, under a pseudonym-see Basil uhammad, Al Ansar al Arab fi Afghanistan (The Arab Volunteers in Afghanistan) (Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) and World Association of Muslim Youth, 1991)]. Azzam wanted the group to remain in Afghanistan to secure a "true" Islamic government, and focus on the Isreali issue in the next stage of operations, but Bin Laden wanted the organization to be capable of fighting anywhere in the world. The dispute became moot on November 24, 1989 when Azzam was killed (presumably by rival Egyptians) by a remotely-controlled car bomb. Ayman al Zawahiri, physician and leader of a faction of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, became Bin Laden's deputy years later when their two groups merged.
Bin Laden had achieved sufficient stature among Muslim extremists by Fall 1989 that Hassan al-Turabi, leader of Sudan's National Islamic Front, urged him to move his entire organization to Sudan. "While agents of Bin Laden began to buy property in Sudan in 1990, Bin Laden himself moved from Afghanistan back to Saudi Arabia." He left for Sudan the following year when the Saudi government tried to silence his protests against the American presence in the kingdom. In 1994, the Saudi government froze his assets and revoked his citizenship. Under the auspices of the Sudanese government, Bin Laden built a large and far-reaching network of organizations associated with al Qaeda worldwide.
Building an Organization, Declaring War on the United States (1992–1996)
59
Al Qaeda's Renewal in Afghanistan (1996–1998)
63
- "Hunting Bin Ladin," PBS Frontline broadcast, May 1998
- For a good introduction to Qutb, see National Public Radio broadcast, "Sayyid Qutb's America," May 6, 2003
- "Bin Laden's 'Letter to America,'" Observer Worldview, Nov 24, 2002
- Arab Human Development Report 2003 (United Nations, 2003)
- President Bush, remarks at roundtable with Arab- and Muslim-American leaders, Sept. 10, 2002
- Bin Ladin interview, see CNN broadcast, interview of Bin Ladin by Peter Arnett on Mar. 20, 1997, May 9, 1997