October 1-15, 2001:

Oct. 1, 2001 – The New York Times publishes an article by Judith Miller with Kurt Eichenwald, “U.S. Set to Widen Financial Assault,” quoting unnamed government officials as saying that the government is about to freeze assets of charities and other organizations suspected of supporting Osama bin Laden.

          “The new list of suspect organizations, now under review by a group of officials led by Treasury Department representatives, includes charities in Saudi Arabia and Chicago, an Arab bank and at least three "hawalas," the informal money-lending networks common in the Arab world. The list is expected to be announced within two weeks . . . The list of entities is considered delicate, officials said, because the administration wants to prevent suspected individuals and institutions from moving their assets to safety before the targets are officially unveiled. When officials announced the list of organizations last week, they knew few had assets in this country, but an official said some assets overseas had been moved to safety.”

In spite of the delicacy of the list, and the statement that only “few had assets in this country,” this Miller-Eichenwald article mentions Chicago; Bridgeport, Illinois; and Palos Hills, Illinois -- the only specific U.S. locations named -- as sites of some charities. Later Miller will allegedly tip off some organizations more directly, leading to a federal case. The unnamed administration sources seem not averse to spiking any investigation proceeding from Illinois.

 
Oct. 7, 2001 – U.S. air strikes against Afghanistan begin, to be sustained for days on end. In a presidential address to the nation, Bush says that “These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.

     We are joined in this operation by our staunch friend, Great Britain. Other close friends, including Canada, Australia, Germany and France, have pledged forces as the operation unfolds.  More than 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and across Asia have granted air transit or landing rights.  Many more have shared intelligence.  We are supported by the collective will of the world.”

Note that the air strikes are not presented as a means to ‘find’ Osama bin Laden or other plotters of the terrorist strikes of September 11 but are part of an attack on Afghanistan’s Taliban. Their effect is to destroy the rudimentary and fragile infrastructure in Afghanistan, where any government could have survived in the first place only with strong international help to create an infrastructure.

Bush continues, “This military action is a part of our campaign against terrorism, another front in a war that has already been joined through diplomacy, intelligence, the freezing of financial assets and the arrests of known terrorists by law enforcement agents in 38 countries.”   

Again, the attack on Afghanistan is presented as “another front,” not part of an intelligence operation against those who perpetrated the 9/11 operation. But then, one effect of the rhetoric about ‘war’ is to disrupt intelligence focus on the 9/11 attacks as an operation.

Oct. 11, 2001 – Exactly a month after 9/11, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas C. Wales in the state of Washington is gunned down while working at his home computer in Seattle. The FBI believes the shooter stood in Wales’ backyard at about 10:40 p.m. and fired several shots through the basement window at Wales. As of 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice is still offering up to $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible in the unsolved case.

Oct. 12, 2001 – New York Times reporter Judith Miller opens what is apparently a hoax letter in the anthrax scare, the only hoax anthrax mailing received by a journalist in the period.

 
Oct. 13, 2001 – Judith Miller and William Broad co-author another New York Times article on terrorist financing, “Philanthropist, or Fount of Funds for Terrorists,” about a California businessman alleged to have provided money to the bin Laden network.

Again, this article – which Miller later writes that she was working on at the time she received the hoax anthrax mailing – reveals one specific U.S. location, in Illinois, for the Islamic charity:

“This is not the first time that Mr. Qadi has come to the attention of the United States government in connection with the financing of terrorist activities. He was identified as the major source of funds for a money-laundering scheme for the Palestinian group Hamas. The case occurred in June 1998, when the Justice Department froze the funds of a foundation near Chicago called the Quranic Literacy Institute and one of its important volunteers, Muhammad A. Salah, for funneling money to Hamas, which the State Department says is a foreign terrorist organization.”

 
Oct. 15, 2001 – The U.S. Intelligence Community takes its first notice of the purported Niger-Iraq uranium deal. SISMI discloses papers documenting an alleged uranium deal between Iraq and Niger to the CIA station chief in Rome, who is not permitted to duplicate the papers and writes a summary of them, sending the report to Langley. The information is considered very limited and lacking in detail.

The Directorate of Operations (DO) in CIA issues a report on the Niger item, an agreement purportedly approved by the state court of Niger in 2000. The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), in the State Department, thinks the item is bogus. (SSCI Report, 36)

Same day -- Admiral Battelli is replaced as chief of Italy’s Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI) by General Nicolò Pollari, later reported by Italian newspapers as under pressure from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to provide material to the Bush administration.