Context of 'February 7, 2001: DIA Director Predicts Major Terrorist Attack on US Interests in Next Two Years'

Thomas Wilson. [Source: Defense Intelligence Agency]Navy Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testifies before Congress. He analyzes the current state of the world and lists some of the threats he sees facing the US. He says a terrorist attack is the most likely threat. He predicts that within the next two years there will be a “major terrorist attack against United States interests, either here or abroad, perhaps with a weapon designed to produce mass casualties.” He predicts higher-casualty attacks as terrorists gain “access to more destructive conventional weapons technologies and [weapons of mass destruction].” [American Forces Press Service, 2/22/2001; American Forces Press Service, 2/22/2001]

Entity Tags: US Congress, Thomas Wilson

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz asks the CIA to look over the 2000 book, Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America by Laurie Mylroie, which argued that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (see October 2000). Wolfowitz will mention shortly after 9/11 how he asked the CIA to do this, but it is unknown what their response is. Presumably it is not one Wolfowitz liked. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 559] Wolfowitz also asks Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), to have his analysts look at the book. The DIA is unable to find any evidence that support the theory. [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 76] Around late July, the US reopens the files on WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef, presumably in response to these requests (see Late July or Early August 2001). But no evidence will be found to support Mylroie’s theory that Yousef was an Iraqi agent. The 9/11 Commission will conclude in 2004, “We have found no credible evidence to support theories of Iraqi government involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 559]

Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, Central Intelligence Agency, Thomas Wilson, Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Intelligence Agency, Ramzi Yousef

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence

Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, submits a written testimony, titled Global Threats and Challenges, to the Senate Armed Services Committee. It is the same testimony that he submitted to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence six weeks earlier describing Saddam Hussein’s military ambitions as being effectively contained by UN sanctions (see February 6, 2002 for a fuller description of this testimony). [US Congress, 3/19/2002 ]

Entity Tags: Thomas Wilson

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

In early February, David Corn, an editor of the progressive magazine The Nation, asks former ambassador Joseph Wilson to write an editorial for the magazine. Corn believes that Wilson’s “establishment credentials” give credibility to the antiwar views that Wilson and the magazine share. Wilson publishes an op-ed in the magazine titled “Republic or Empire?” Wilson, who staunchly supported the 1991 Gulf War (see After February 28, 1991), argues that the US has already succeeded in large part in its efforts to contain and disarm Saddam Hussein. Also, the US’s new military basing agreements throughout the region give it what Wilson calls a “[h]egemony in the Arab nations of the Gulf… a dominant presence astride strategic oil reserves that would enable us to respond to crises in the region much more quickly and efficiently in the future than we had ever been able to in the past. Thus, the conquest of Iraq would not materially improve our influence from southern Asia to the Horn of Africa.” The war is not about Iraqi WMD, nor Iraq’s alleged ties to terrorism, or even about liberating an oppressed populace, Wilson writes. “The underlying objective of this war is the imposition of a Pax Americana on the region and installation of vassal regimes that will control restive populations.” The neoconservatives in the Bush administration, Wilson asserts, “want to go beyond expanding US global influence to force revolutionary change on the region. American pre-eminence in the Gulf is necessary but not sufficient for the hawks. Nothing short of conquest, occupation and imposition of handpicked leaders on a vanquished population will suffice. Iraq is the linchpin for this broader assault on the region. The new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our worldview are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme. Arabs who complain about American-supported antidemocratic regimes today will find us in even more direct control tomorrow. The leader of the future in the Arab world will look a lot more like Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf than Thomas Jefferson.” He concludes: “[W]ith the costs to our military, our treasury and our international standing, we will be forced to learn whether our republican roots and traditions can accommodate the administration’s imperial ambitions. It may be a bitter lesson.” [Nation, 3/3/2003; Wilson, 2004, pp. 318-319, 469-472]

Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Saddam Hussein, David Corn

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing