Terrorism Before 9/11

The following is an excerpt from the new book, “9/11: The Unfinished Battle: Why Jihadi Terrorism Is Stronger, Wider, and Far From Over,” by Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski, published by Optimum International Publishing.

It is of course true to state that terrorism did not start in September 2001. While there is no single agreed-upon definition of terrorism, it is nevertheless accepted that modern-day terrorism—the word “terrorism” itself in English only dates to the latter part of the 19th century—appears to have gone through four stages or “waves” as described by UCLA scholar David Rapoport.

A complete discussion of Rapoport’s paradigm is beyond the scope of this book and a short synopsis suffices. According to Rapoport the world has endured four waves of terrorism since the mid-19th century: the anarchist, anti-colonialist, new left, and religious periods. The anarchist wave included several assassinations of heads of state. The anti-colonial period included movements and groups in nations such as Ireland, Kenya, Algeria, and Palestine. The new left was marked by groups in the West (the Baader Meinhof Gang in Germany, the Red Brigade in Italy, and the Weather Underground in the U.S., among many others) which engaged in kidnappings and hostage-taking, assassinations, and bombings. Lastly, the religious manifestation, which is largely concentrated in jihadist groups (Rapoport wrote that “Islam is at the heart of the wave,” although he added that Sikh, Jewish, and Christian terrorists were inspired by the Islamists).

The fourth wave, which is still very much present today, has been by far the most lethal in history. Its traditional starting point has been identified as 1979, a year which saw the Iranian revolution, the take- over of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Saudi fundamentalist extremists, and the ill-chosen Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (the latter led to the creation of Al Qaeda). Even this categorization is too broad, but it will serve our purposes (the sources of the ideology date back centuries, but are not important here).

The ouster of the Shah in Iran in February 1979 brought in a Shia theocratic government under the ayatollahs (with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as “supreme leader”). This interpretation of Islam was both revolutionary and violent, and Iran soon became the inspiration to, as well as the direct supporter for, terrorist groups around the world. The Iranian umbrella included such groups as Hezbollah in Lebanon, various Iraqi groups—Iraq , like Iran, is majority Shia—and later the Houthis in Yemen, as well as Sunni jihadists Hamas. In this sense, Iran was a “state sponsor of terrorism,” providing both the ideological and religious underpinnings of its clients, as well as arms and other materials used in terrorist attacks.

The Saudis responded to the November seizure of the Grand Mosque not by denouncing Islamist violence but by allowing the more extreme elements within the nation’s religious schools to spread their version of the faith—known as Wahhabism, a doctrine that dates to the mid-18th century in the Kingdom—further within the country, the region, and around the world. This odd tactic directly led to the widespread adoption of Islamist extremist viewpoints in areas once ignorant of it (Indonesia is a strong example, where the Pesantrens—religious schools—embraced Wahhabist teaching and were the formative grounds for terrorist groups such as Jemaah Islamiyyah (JI).

It was the Soviet decision to take over Afghanistan at the end of 1979 which had by far the greatest impact, however. With U.S. backing, Afghans and the so-called “Afghan Arabs,” among whom was Saudi citizen Usama bin Laden (UBL), took on the Soviet army and, a decade later, convinced the invaders to leave. Al Qaeda (AQ) was born.

Confident in having defeated the Red Army, Al Qaeda sought other battlefields where it believed Muslims were suffering. It sent fighters or support to the Balkans following the dissolution of Yugoslavia and to the Caucasus, where a different set of Muslim fighters was engaged with the Soviets. A request by the Saudi royals to the U.S. to send troops to the peninsula after Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait in August 1990—fearing he had the Kingdom next in his sights—allegedly infuriated bin Laden, who viewed the Western presence as “un-Islamic” and a dangerous cultural threat to the land of the “two holy mosques,” Mecca and Medina. AQ’s war against the West was on, with nary a thanks for its support during its battles with the Soviets.

By the mid-1990s, the Five Eyes intelligence network (consisting of agencies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S.) was regularly monitoring the actions of what was called the “bin Laden network” (I was privy to that reporting on a daily basis). We were definitely aware of it and providing intelligence to senior decision-makers, although it is not clear just how seriously the threat was being taken. Note that the Communications Security Establishment Canada did NOT have a dedicated counter-terrorism (CT) effort at the time: that came into effect only after 9/11.

One would have thought that a series of major jihadi attacks prior to 2001 would have boosted this menace to the top of the heap. Among the many examples are the 1983 Marine barracks bombings in Beirut, Lebanon, by a group calling itself Islamic Jihad which resulted in more than 300 deaths, the first World Trade Center bombing in New York in 1993 orchestrated by Ramzi Yousef and which caused six deaths and more than 1,000 injuries (very much a precursor to 9/11), the 1996 Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, truck bombing at a complex housing U.S. military personnel that killed 19 and wounded nearly 500 and was claimed by Al Qaeda (although some saw the handiwork of Hezbollah), two simultaneous bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania carried out by Al Qaeda in 1998 that caused 224 deaths and more than 4,500 injuries, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour (Yemen) claimed by Al Qaeda in which 17 sailors died2 (my first analytic piece at CSIS was a look at Al Qaeda involvement in that incident).

To say then that we were “surprised” by the attacks in September 2001 would be inaccurate. We had been following Al Qaeda for a very long time, had seen attacks claimed by the group elsewhere, and were well aware of UBL’s animus towards us. Al Qaeda was NOT an “unknown” quantity. Then-CIA Director George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that by the summer of 2001 “the system was blinking red.”

In fact, in a February 1998 “fatwa” (an Islamic ruling by a qualified scholar), UBL and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri noted that the U.S. had “declared war against Allah and his Messenger [the Prophet Muhammad]” and as a consequence every Muslim had an obligation to kill Americans “anywhere on Earth” (this is known in Islamic jurisprudence as “fard ayn,” an obligation on all Muslims, one that the Taliban repeated as recently as September 2025 with respect to neighboring Pakistan). That sounds very clear to me! Whether or not the statement was realistic is beside the point: it issued instructions to anyone who wanted to read it.

After the 1998 embassy attacks in East Africa, the U.S. placed UBL on its ten most-wanted fugitive list and began to look at the organization’s presence in the U.S. So yes, a lot was in place to determine the level of threat it posed to America.

The U.S. intelligence community had been monitoring jihadi “chatter” (i.e. phone calls and other messaging) and knew that something was being planned for the U.S. In fact, in the Aug. 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) there was an item entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US,” the 36th time UBL had been mentioned in PDB that year alone.

Two days before the attacks on New York and Washington, Al Qaeda operatives killed Ahmad Shah Masoud, the “lion of Panjshir,” a veteran mujahid who had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Was this a precursor to 9/11? Should Western intelligence have seen this as a warning sign? Scholars and practitioners are still debating the relevance of the killing to what transpired two day later in the U.S. to this day.

And on Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda operatives struck at the U.S. homeland: two airliners were steered into the World Trade Center towers, a third hit the Pentagon, and a fourth (destined for the White House?) crashed in a field in Pennsylvania when passengers, aware of the fate of the other three aircraft, rushed the cockpit and foiled the terrorists’ plans.

So, was 9/11 an “intelligence failure”? On one level yes. In the security intelligence sphere, any time you do not stop an attack from occurring you have failed (just look at the blame heaped on Israel’s security services for not predicting the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on the country’s south).

In the world of imagination, anything is possible, provided it does not violate the laws of physics. Al Qaeda could have stolen nuclear technology and constructed a “dirty bomb” (essentially a radioactive device), a concern that occupied many great minds at the time. This kind of attack has never been carried off. It could also have carried out high-level assassinations in multiple countries, which it did not.

There were also suspicious signs that Al Qaeda or other jihadi groups were considering the use of airliners as missiles in attack planning. This tactic went against the grain of accepted wisdom in counter terrorism circles at the time as planes were seen as tools to be seized (i.e. hijacked) and used as bargaining chips for the release of incarcerated terrorists or other political goals. No one really believed that anyone, including AQ, would put its men on board, gain control of the cockpit, and fly them into buildings, assuring their own destruction. In fact, the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) had intelligence pointing to a “possible near term terrorist operation” against civil aviation, including a hijacking focus.

And yet, Algerian terrorists had planned that very strategy in 1994 when they commandeered an Air France flight with the intention of crashing it into the Eiffel Tower (the plot was foiled by France’s National Gendarmerie Intervention Group, GIGN, when the aircraft landed to refuel in Marseilles). In the mid-1990s, Ramzi Yousef, the “mastermind” behind the first WTC bombing, also planned to bomb 11 U.S. flights across the Pacific, assassinate Pope John Paul II, and have an airliner flown into the CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia, the so-called “Bojinka plot.” It is thus clear that these possibilities had crossed the minds of Western intelligence.

Still, in the end, surprise or not, Al Qaeda was successful and more than 3,000 people died, by far the single greatest act of terrorism in history that has yet to be surpassed. Those tasked with interdicting these acts did not do what was expected of them. In this business, you are only as good as your last (perceived) failure. It is likely the debate will go on for a very long time.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.