End of an Era, Part IV: Kingmakers & Kingdoms

The straw, the camel's back

At 7:15 on the morning of September 11, Khalid al-Mihdhar checked in for American Airlines Flight 77 at Washington Dulles. Nawaf al-Hazmi followed minutes later. At 9:37:46, their aircraft struck the Pentagon. NORAD’s Northeast sector had never been told that Flight 77 was hijacked. It learned by chance at 9:34 only that the aircraft was missing, then received at most one or two minutes’ warning of an unidentified plane approaching Washington. The institution expected to defend the country met the plot almost at the moment of impact.¹

From 1996 through 1999, John Brennan served as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. During that date range, Jeddah consular officers approved visas for Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. The CIA's station ran out of the same U.S. Embassy in Riyadh. A 2021 military-commission defense declaration records a former FBI agent’s belief that Hazmi’s and Mihdhar’s visas facilitated a Saudi GID–CIA operation. Surveillance of the January 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur exposed Mihdhar’s multiple-entry visa; by March, CIA knew Hazmi had entered Los Angeles. An FBI detailee’s January report for Bureau channels was marked “hold off” at the Bin Laden Unit deputy chief’s instruction and never released. The FBI received the travel information that August.²

Hazmi and Mihdhar meanwhile settled in San Diego, where Omar al-Bayoumi helped them find an apartment and they later rented a room from an active FBI informant. The Bureau says it discovered those relationships after the attacks. The July 2001 Phoenix memorandum raised the possibility that bin Laden was sending students into American aviation schools; its recommendations were not acted upon. In August, Minneapolis agents detained Zacarias Moussaoui after his simulator training raised hijacking concerns, but did not search his computer before September 11.³

The fragmented intelligence never outlined the whole plot, but NSA had indeed already linked Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Salem al-Hazmi to a possible operational cadre. The 9/11 Commission later found related identifiers in NSA databases, some reported and some not.² The government had collected names, travel, associations, aviation warnings and investigative suspicions, but control, compartmentation and priority kept them from becoming timely operational knowledge. On the morning itself, the military received no warning of United 175 before impact, no hijack warning for Flight 77, and notice of United 93 only after it had crashed.¹ It was the decisive recipient of a picture no institution had assembled and delivered.

The relevant intelligence was not passed along, subverting regular official process. Three days later, the federal response converted those exposed failures into a claim for expanded authority. On September 14, Proclamation 7463 declared an emergency dating from the attacks and activated sweeping executive powers that closed some gaps, but not all.⁴

Much of the machinery predated September 11. Congress enacted the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in 1994, making lawful-intercept capability a hard-wired component of commercial telecommunications networks. InfraGard connected the FBI to companies and universities. After 9/11, Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) grew from 35 to 103 by March 2005; more than half their 5,085 members came from outside the FBI.²⁴

The financial backdoor was personnel. The CIA approved Ronald Rewald as a contact and used his investment business to backstop covert officers after waiving a full background check despite derogatory information; he was later convicted on ninety-four fraud and related counts. Kamal Adham, CIA’s former principal Middle East liaison, fronted BCCI’s secret acquisition of First American and pleaded guilty. A Senate investigation found that CIA knew of BCCI’s criminality and hidden ownership but did not give the Federal Reserve or Justice Department the information needed to act.²⁵ These were not isolated outsiders slipping through procedural cracks; official positions and acknowledged relationships supplied the access.

USAID supplied another financial route. Michael Hase, a thirty-year USAID accountant and its Armenia mission controller, redirected payments due through the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and an Armenian bank into his own account. He pleaded guilty to theft and filing a false tax return; his plea also disclosed a hidden UBS account. Inside CIA itself, the same personnel gate failed at senior level: David Rush reached Senior Executive Service and held TS/SCI access after applications claimed degrees from Clemson and Rensselaer that neither school could verify. In 2026, FBI agents recovered 303 gold bars worth more than $40 million, roughly $2 million in cash and about 35 luxury watches from his home; the affidavit says his employer had supplied the gold and foreign currency for work expenses.²⁵

The contractor layer supplied structural access. At Leon Panetta’s 2009 confirmation hearing, Dianne Feinstein said the intelligence-contractor workforce doubled from 2001 to 2006 and most had been hired after 9/11. In 2006, the FBI awarded Lockheed Martin $305 million to build Sentinel, its electronic case-management, evidence, workflow, search and information-sharing system. Its oversight office—covering cost, schedule, performance, requirements, risk and acceptance—planned 74 percent contractor staffing; Booz Allen Hamilton independently reviewed Phase 1.²⁶

In 2005, the FBI created a National Security Higher Education Advisory Board with leaders from Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Texas A&M, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego).²⁷ Those same universities recur throughout this series in formal partnerships with Chinese institutions tied to advanced, dual-use and defense research.²⁷

Keeping the data rolling

The joint inspectors-general report documents how threat assessments sustained repeated renewals of the President’s Surveillance Program. President George W. Bush signed the first authorization October 4, 2001, permitting specified NSA surveillance inside the United States without Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders. Between then and December 8, 2006, he signed 43 authorizations, generally at intervals of about 45 days. The relevant activities moved under FISA authority in January 2007.²⁹

CIA terrorism analysts wrote the renewal threat assessments without initially knowing the program or their work’s purpose. John H. Moseman, then Tenet’s chief of staff, added a paragraph—language he recalled receiving from either Alberto Gonzales or David Addington—asserting a continuing domestic threat and recommending renewal. CIA lawyers judged whether drafts made a compelling case and requested additional information or revisions when they did not.²⁹

Although no law required it, the Attorney General’s certification reassured NSA and participating private-sector personnel. Alberto Gonzales said it also had prospective value, for “purely political considerations,” if Congress or an inspector general examined the program.²⁹

NSA-derived leads reached FBI offices without their protected source or full context. Agents said most had no connection to terrorism but pursued every one because a single genuine lead could matter. The inspectors general found the program played only a limited role in the FBI’s counterterrorism work.²⁹

When Justice Department lawyers later concluded that parts of the program lacked a viable legal basis, Robert Mueller and James Comey were prepared to resign. The program was instead modified.²⁹

The machinery created three "backdoors." Hardware embedded access in CALEA intercepts, switching equipment, servers, technical standards, supply chains and research routes. Personnel and red tape determined who could use that capacity and receive its products through clearances, compartments, detailees, contractors, banking posts, task-force seats, universities, think tanks and routing rules. Before 9/11, CIA’s Bin Laden Unit blocked an FBI detailee’s warning to the Bureau about Mihdhar’s visa.²

The legal backdoor supplied permission, secrecy and duration. The National Emergency, Authorization for Use of Military Force, PATRIOT mechanisms, President’s Surveillance Program and later FISA revisions were separate authorities with separate limits.⁵ Together they expanded collection, retention, sharing and action while moving decisions away from ordinary public process. Exceptionally restricted access to the surveillance program also impaired legal review.²⁹

The three depended on one another: technical access, authorized personnel and legal permission. Together they created conditions for failure, coerced compromises, private profit, demands for greater authority and expansion of each authority granted. September 11 opened the legal door; the hardware and personnel infrastructure already existed.

The Belgrade chain reaction

From 1998 through 2001, Solar Sunrise struck Defense networks; Melissa and LoveLetter disrupted email; Code Red, Code Red II and Nimda exploited vulnerable Internet-connected systems. Together they formed the contested technical environment surrounding the State, USAID, academic, industrial, Silicon Valley, In-Q-Tel, Chinese-investment and personnel channels traced earlier. Michigan State routing research yielded a commercial network emulator and a Chinese venture jointly funded by Michigan-based CC&T and China Sanjiang Aerospace. A December 2000 Chinese report said a National Defence University network attack-and-defense system had passed appraisal after four years—an inferred 1996–2000 development window.⁶ Sanjiang was CASIC’s Base 066, a designer and producer of the DF-11 ballistic-missile system.⁶

Twenty-eight months before September 11, a B-2 crew struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade at coordinates from a CIA-assembled target package cleared through military review; the crew did not choose the target.⁷

CIA originated and wholly assembled the target package for Yugoslavia’s Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement. Unable to find the building on available maps, an officer used field-navigation methods and assigned the Chinese embassy’s coordinates to a military-procurement office roughly three hundred meters away. Three CIA meetings reviewed the nomination without examining his geolocation method. Intelligence and military databases still carried the embassy’s old address, so their checks returned the same answer. The coordinates acquired what George Tenet later called the “mantle of fact.”⁷

A second CIA officer encountered the nomination by chance, remembered material placing the target elsewhere and called the military targeting cell in Naples three days before the strike. He then found information supporting the discrepancy. The warning crossed one compartment of the system, changed meaning at the CIA–military boundary and never reached an official able to stop the geopolitically doomed mission.⁷

Belgrade also sat inside an electronic battlespace. A joint Observer–Politiken investigation cited anonymous NATO and intelligence sources alleging that the embassy rebroadcast Yugoslav military traffic after another transmitter was destroyed; witnesses also described Yugoslav military contact with the compound.⁸ No released signal record has settled the allegation, and a competing account placed the transmissions at Hotel Yugoslavia. The relay remains unresolved and does not by itself explain the strike.

As traced earlier in this series, reporting placed CIA officers among the 1998–99 cease-fire monitors, cultivating and advising the U.S.-backed, predominantly secular Albanian-nationalist KLA; a commander described earlier meetings with American agents in northern Albania.⁹ A smaller, mistrusted foreign-mujahideen current entered the same theater. In United States v. Jayyousi, Mohamed Hesham Youssef called from Albania and Kosovo while Adham Hassoun arranged money and discussed Jose Padilla’s travel. Another federal record placed Wa’el Julaidan at the head of a Saudi relief body in Kosovo; Treasury linked him to bin Laden’s network.⁹ These overlaps did not make the KLA al-Qaeda; they placed American power, irregular fighters, Saudi intermediaries and Middle Eastern militant networks in the same theater.

Tenet accepted responsibility for the intelligence failure; Defense for dropping the bombs; the international review treated the aircrew as blameless because it received the wrong target. The error originated upstream, but the military inherited the public fallout with China while U.S.–Chinese technical channels continued. A State-chaired meeting then set a “rollout strategy” covering political and military briefings, congressional timing, compensation and accountability.¹⁰

Within days, CIA sources reported an unusually strong opportunity to strike Osama bin Laden near Kandahar. CIA and military officials later disputed which institution doubted the intelligence and which refused the risk. A military officer remembered the Pentagon prepared to fire; the CIA’s bin Laden unit ironically feared the Agency would be left to “hang alone” if the missiles missed. The 9/11 Commission said Belgrade scrutiny may have increased caution. Newly released Clarke interviews record Tenet demanding greater confidence and State officials fearing a “bomb-happy” reputation.¹¹ The next decision again paired an intelligence service fearing another miss with a military dependent on intelligence it did not control.

Pentagon wears the scars

After September 11, the CIA–military dependency exposed at Belgrade became the operating structure of the war in Afghanistan. American policy had previously built—and then removed—a thin institutional scaffold there. In 1987, it sought Afghan capacity in agriculture, medicine, education and public administration; USAID’s cross-border machinery helped Afghan organizations perform what its own design called the civil functions of government.¹²

American arms to the resistance and Soviet arms to Kabul ended on January 1, 1992, before the Islamic State of Afghanistan was formally constituted. When the communist government fell, USAID redirected portions of its remaining resistance-era machinery toward the new state: education planning, textbooks, teacher training, public-health administration, immunization, agricultural extension, procurement, budgeting and regional services.¹³ Congress then required USAID to shrink its worldwide mission network. Administrator J. Brian Atwood’s agency chose Afghanistan, cancelled intended successor programs and closed the bilateral development machinery during 1994.¹⁴

Relief continued through other channels. Afghan ministries, communities, NGOs and United Nations agencies preserved parts of the system; Iran and Russia continued supporting the Rabbani–Massoud side. Civil war, factional collapse and government failure had their own causes. American records nevertheless identify the capacity that disappeared. Supported health staffing fell from 5,363 workers to 1,905 by closeout, while basic health posts fell from 2,271 to 982. Teacher salaries ended, successor care was cancelled, institutional systems remained unfinished, and the USAID mission responsible for sustaining and monitoring them closed while Pakistani support for the Taliban intensified.¹³

Washington returned through its surviving intelligence contact with Massoud’s network. CIA officer Gary Schroen recalled that the government had declined the fuller pre-9/11 relationship with Massoud he advocated while preserving limited contact. After Massoud’s assassination and the September 11 attacks, Schroen was ordered to join his surviving network, prepare the battlefield and help bring in American Special Forces.¹⁵ That limited foothold became the opening through which CIA and the military reentered Afghanistan.

The Taliban gave bin Laden sanctuary, but the target network crossed Afghanistan’s borders. Bin Laden and the organization that became al-Qaeda had moved through Peshawar, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the Gulf; Pakistan remained a transit corridor, a place of regional intelligence liaison and eventual sanctuary. A September 12 presidential brief carried an unverified claim that he had moved from Kandahar toward Kabul. The Army’s official history says CIA still could not pinpoint him during the opening campaign. The trail firmed at Tora Bora in December, where all-source reporting placed him before he escaped across the Pakistani border the campaign had failed to seal.¹⁶ The military received an Afghanistan-centered mission built from a cross-border intelligence problem.

Iraq repeated the structure on a larger scale. Stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, renewed nuclear and missile capacity, and an operational Iraq–al-Qaeda relationship were presented as a converging threat. Benjamin Netanyahu publicly reinforced that case in televised congressional testimony on September 12, 2002.¹⁷ Later investigations dismantled central portions of the picture the military had been sent to act upon. Afghanistan turned a cross-border intelligence problem into a country-shaped mission; Iraq turned disputed and qualified intelligence into a second country-shaped war.

In February 2011, Michael Hastings reported that an information-operations team in Afghanistan had been assigned to study visiting American officials and build support for more trainers and money. Seven months later, on September 30, an American operation killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, in Yemen; President Obama publicly announced the killing.¹⁸ The government’s legal memorandum substituted executive assessment for ordinary criminal adjudication: officials could determine that a citizen was an operational enemy, that capture was infeasible and that lethal force was lawful. Intelligence now supplied the predicate for extinguishing an American citizen’s life without a trial.

Counteroffensive

On May 26, 1999, the Joint Staff issued CJCSM 3500.08, its Joint Psychological Operations Task Force Headquarters Master Training Guide. J5 defined the desired end state and themes; J3 controlled product, priority, medium, dissemination agent and timing; J2 and J3 collected audience reactions; J3 and J5 measured effects and recommended branches or sequels; J6 supplied communications. Cancelled in 2004 and released two decades later, the guide makes one recurring sequence legible: select a story, place it in an environment, monitor the response, exploit the opening and assess what follows.¹⁹

Hastings reported a dispute over that machinery: an information-operations team attached to William Caldwell’s Afghan training command researched visiting American officials—including senators—supported briefings and assessed message effects. Team leader Michael Holmes said the command sought support for more trainers and money; he acknowledged using public records, not deception or a specialized psychological technique. Petraeus ordered an inquiry, and the official investigation did not substantiate the allegation against Caldwell.²⁰

Flynn had already written the counteroffensive. In January 2010, he, Matt Pottinger and Paul Batchelor published Fixing Intel from inside the Afghanistan command. The system, they wrote, had become “only marginally relevant” to the strategy because it collected enemy organizations while failing to gather and distribute the political, economic and social information commanders and civilian partners needed. Their remedy was outward-facing analysts, district assessments, regional “information brokers,” lower-classification products, and Stability Operations Information Centers working with or replacing fusion centers. Inputs would come from civil affairs, Provincial Reconstruction Teams, Afghan liaison, development organizations, human-terrain teams, infantry and psychological operations. This was a counteroffensive against Intelligence Community control over what became usable intelligence—and who could receive it.²¹

Petraeus publicly endorsed that diagnosis. Testifying before Congress in June 2010, he called Flynn’s paper a “forthright assessment,” said Flynn was in Afghanistan to fix the problem and described the resources and population-focused collection being added. Petraeus entered CIA in September 2011; Flynn took DIA in July 2012. For three and a half months before Petraeus resigned, the paper’s author led DIA while its most visible military endorser led CIA.²² Syria made the split literal. An August 2012 DIA information report identified Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda in Iraq as the insurgency’s major drivers and warned of a possible Salafist principality in eastern Syria. Flynn later called the choice to support that insurgency a “willful decision.” The CIA armed anti-Assad factions; the Pentagon armed anti-ISIS forces. By 2016, U.S. officials described the two fighting one another.²²

Washington already possessed an interagency system through which information and personnel could move. An August 2011 FBI–DoD memorandum governed information sharing, operational coordination and investigative responsibility. Defense investigators and analysts served inside FBI-led JTTFs; the clearest Navy rule left them under NCIS administrative control but FBI operational supervision. Joint-duty rotations moved analysts between institutions. Title 32 National Guard counterdrug personnel supplied thousands of staff-days inside state fusion centers under governors, state plans and drug-nexus limits.²³ These were authorized seats, clearances, requests and reciprocal details: a red-tape system able to move information—or stop it.

The legal rules governing foreign-audience material also changed. Section 1078 of the FY2013 defense bill, effective July 2, 2013, allowed State Department and international-broadcasting material created for foreign audiences to be made available inside the United States. It retained the prohibition on using those funds to influence American opinion and expressly did not apply to the Pentagon.³⁰ Yet DoD’s 2003 Information Operations Roadmap had already noted that foreign-directed public diplomacy and psychological operations would often be replayed by news organizations and consumed at home.³¹ Foreign-directed messages could therefore reach domestic audiences even where legal authorities differed.

Dispose after use

Hours before his death on June 18, 2013, an email from Hastings’s account warned colleagues that federal authorities were interviewing people close to him and urged them to consult counsel before discussing their journalism. Staff Sgt. Joe Biggs, whom Hastings met while embedded with Biggs’s Afghanistan unit in 2008, published an image and claimed a blind copy; colleagues confirmed their own copies, but his image did not display the BCC. WikiLeaks separately said Hastings contacted its lawyer. The FBI denied investigating Hastings personally, while its released file showed his Bergdahl reporting memorialized inside an international-terrorism investigation. Police and the coroner found an accidental high-speed crash. Biggs’s claimed BCC remained unverified, leaving others to define the story after Hastings was gone.³²

Elimination does not always arrive as a bullet, a bomb or a covert operation. It can take the form of investigation, selective disclosure, media saturation, professional removal, prosecution, financial destruction or exile. Seven months before Hastings’s death, Petraeus supplied the clearest nonphysical demonstration. The FBI inquiry began with Jill Kelley’s complaint about anonymous messages traced to Paula Broadwell. Agent Frederick Humphries took the matter outside the ordinary chain on October 27, 2012, contacting Representative Dave Reichert, who connected him to Eric Cantor. Cantor’s staff reached the FBI director’s chief of staff by October 31. After Broadwell’s final interview, FBI and Justice officials notified James Clapper on November 6. Clapper urged Petraeus to resign; the White House learned November 7, the President November 8, and the resignation came November 9. An email complaint had become an investigation, congressional disclosure, executive intervention, public saturation and removal. Six months later Petraeus joined KKR, rerouted into private influence rather than erased from history.³³

Snowden embodied all three backdoors: contractor access to collection hardware, a personnel system carrying state access into private employment, and secret legal authority for mass surveillance. His disclosures changed the public record. The federal privacy board found no viable statutory basis for the Section 215 bulk-telephone program; the Second Circuit held that Section 215 had not authorized it. The government charged Snowden under the Espionage Act and with theft. The architecture remained; the man who exposed it became an exile.^{28 34}

Flynn moved from government reform into private national-security work. DIA retained his clearance after retirement, reaffirmed it in 2016 and suspended his access in February 2017, with no public announcements regarding that clearance thereafter. His disclosures placed him across cyber, data, defense, communications, consulting and investment firms; they named CNAS and the FBI as consulting-income sources without describing the work. Federal filings separately documented Flynn Intel Group’s paid research-and-public-affairs campaign concerning Turkish interests.³⁵ He remained active in private national-security markets; because his FBI work is undisclosed, whether it carried his information-methods counteroffensive into the Bureau remains unresolved.

Biggs carried the purported Hastings BCC into an InfoWars career. Years later, his lawyers said he regularly supplied information to the FBI; the Justice Department then prosecuted and convicted him over January 6, and his seventeen-year sentence was commuted in 2025. At InfoWars, Jones provided the platform through which Biggs amplified the Hastings claim; Congress later subpoenaed Jones over January 6. A former InfoWars producer later said FBI agents met the team after its Mexico reporting and told them they were using its video as information.³⁶

Epstein-linked money helped finance Ehud Barak’s investment in Reporty, later Carbyne, an Israeli emergency-data company. After Epstein died in federal custody under the official suicide finding, former CIA director Petraeus entered Carbyne’s investor list. Released records show classified FBI handling of Epstein-related information and receipt from an unidentified external partner.³⁷ The methods differed—death, resignation, prosecution, exile and private-sector rerouting—but the outcomes remained the same: eliminated from public influence.

The people were removable; the system was not. On September 8, 2026, President Donald J. Trump signed the notice preventing Proclamation 7463 from expiring on its twenty-fifth anniversary. Filed September 9 and published September 10 as 91 FR 57773, it continued the emergency beyond September 14, 2026.³⁸ A catastrophe preceded by failures to move intelligence—and answered with claims for more control—left a state able to collect, watch, classify and act farther from ordinary process. Privacy and due process receded while the institutions controlling what intelligence traveled, and to whom, kept that control...

For 25 years.

Footnotes

1. 1. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 1, “We Have Some Planes”.

   https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.htm

2. 2. U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, A Review of the FBI’s Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the September 11 Attacks, Chapter Five; National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 6 and Chapter 11, and 9/11 and Terrorist Travel; Donald C. Canestraro, declaration dated July 20, 2021, pp. 5–6; White House, John Brennan biography; Congressional Record, March 7, 2013.

   https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/s0606/chapter5.htm

   https://9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch6.htm

   https://9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch11.htm

   https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-Y3-PURL-LPS53197/pdf/GOVPUB-Y3-PURL-LPS53197.pdf

   https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23787466-att-b-2021-07-20-donald-canestraro-declaration-dated-20-july-2021/

   https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/author/john-BRENNAN/

   https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2013-pt2/pdf/CRECB-2013-pt2.pdf

3. 3. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 7 and Chapter 8; DOJ OIG, Phoenix memorandum and Moussaoui review.

   https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch7.htm

   https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch8.htm

   https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/s0606/chapter3.htm

   https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/s0606/chapter4.htm

4. 4. President George W. Bush, Proclamation 7463, “Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks”, September 14, 2001.

   https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2002-title3-vol1/pdf/CFR-2002-title3-vol1-proc7463.pdf

5. 5. Congress, Authorization for Use of Military Force, USA PATRIOT Act, and FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

   https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf

   https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ56.pdf

   https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-110publ261/pdf/PLAW-110publ261.pdf

6. 6. The Everlasting Hack; GAO, AIMD-00-1; CERT/CC, 1999 advisories, 2000 advisories, and 2001 advisories; 3JET, 1998 joint-funding report and 2000 National Defence University report; U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, China’s Advanced Weapons Systems, 2018, pp. 132–33.

   https://gusquixote.com/articles/gusquixote/the-everlasting-hack/index.html

   https://www.gao.gov/assets/aimd-00-1.pdf

   https://resources.sei.cmu.edu/asset_files/whitepaper/1999_019_001_496184.pdf

   https://www.sei.cmu.edu/documents/507/2000_019_001_496188.pdf

   https://www.sei.cmu.edu/documents/508/2001_019_001_496192.pdf

   https://web.archive.org/web/19990829101208/http://www.3jet.com/news14.htm

   https://web.archive.org/web/20010202182100/http://www.3jet.com/NEWS35.HTM

   https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Jane%27s%20by%20IHS%20Markit_China%27s%20Advanced%20Weapons%20Systems.pdf

7. 7. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, July 22, 1999 statement; CIA, no-strike study; International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, bombing review.

   https://usinfo.org/usia/usinfo.state.gov/regional/ea/uschina/tenet722.htm

   https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0006122212.pdf

   https://www.icty.org/x/file/About/OTP/otp_report_nato_bombing_en.pdf

8. 8. Observer–Politiken investigation; UK House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Committee review; alternative explanation.

   https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/17/balkans

   https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmfafF/28/2814.htm

   https://www.salon.com/2000/02/10/embassy/

9. 9. Tom Walker and Aidan Laverty, “CIA Aided Kosovo Guerrilla Army”, The Sunday Times, March 12, 2000, archived by Global Policy Forum; United States v. Jayyousi, Eleventh Circuit opinion; DOJ chronology; Kadi v. Geithner, administrative record; Treasury, Julaidan designation.

   https://archive.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/kosovo1/ksv17.htm

   https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/200810494.pdf

   https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/osg/briefs/2005/01/01/2005-0533.resp.pdf

   https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_09-cv-00108/pdf/USCOURTS-dcd-1_09-cv-00108-0.pdf

   https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/po3397

10. 10. CIA, memorandum recording the State-chaired rollout meeting.

    https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0001081818

11. 11. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Report, Chapter 4; National Archives, Richard Clarke interview Document 2 and Document 3.

    https://911commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch4.htm

    https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2026-201-document-2-release-508.pdf

    https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2026-201-document-3-release-508.pdf

12. 12. President Ronald Reagan, National Security Decision Directive 270.

    https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/public/archives/reference/scanned-nsdds/nsdd270.pdf

13. 13. USAID, Afghanistan education completion report, health completion report, and agricultural evaluation.

    https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDABJ201.pdf

    https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDABJ202.pdf

    https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDABE157.pdf

14. 14. United Nations, 1991 arms-cutoff record; Peshawar Accord; USAID Administrator J. Brian Atwood, November 1993 congressional letter.

    https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/137687/files/E_CN-4_1992_33-EN.pdf?registerDownload=1&version=1&withMetadata=0&withWatermark=0

    https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/default/files/document/files/2024/05/af920424peshawar20accord.pdf

    https://www.congress.gov/103/crecb/1993/11/18/GPO-CRECB-1993-pt21-2-3.pdf

15. 15. PBS Frontline, interview with CIA officer Gary Schroen.

    https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/schroen.html

16. 16. CIA, September 12, 2001 PDB; U.S. Army, official Afghanistan history; Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Tora Bora Revisited; CIA, declassified Afghanistan campaign history.

    https://www.cia.gov/static/09-12-2001-Situation-Report-Bin-Ladins-Tracks.pdf

    https://history.army.mil/portals/143/Images/Publications/catalog/70-83-1.pdf

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-111SPRT53709/pdf/CPRT-111SPRT53709.pdf

    https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2012-041-doc01.pdf

17. 17. House Committee on Government Reform, Benjamin Netanyahu testimony, September 12, 2002; Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, prewar-intelligence report.

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-107hhrg83514/pdf/CHRG-107hhrg83514.pdf

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-108srpt301/pdf/CRPT-108srpt301.pdf

18. 18. President Barack Obama, September 30, 2011 remarks; DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, al-Aulaqi memorandum.

    https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/30/remarks-president-change-office-chairman-joint-chiefs-staff-ceremony/

    https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/pages/attachments/2015/04/02/2010-07-16_-_olc_aaga_barron_-_al-aulaqi.pdf

19. 19. Joint Chiefs of Staff, CJCSM 3500.08, Joint Psychological Operations Task Force Headquarters Master Training Guide, May 26, 1999.

    https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Joint_Staff/16-F-1727_CJCSM_3500.08_26-May-1999.pdf

20. 20. Michael Hastings, “Another Runaway General”; contemporaneous email reporting; official investigative disposition.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20110228022005/http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/another-runaway-general-army-deploys-psy-ops-on-u-s-senators-20110223

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/soldier_questions_propriety_of_using_psy_ops_tactics_on_senators/2011/02/26/ABpIoTJ_story.html

    https://www.dvidshub.net/news/512754/report-clears-afghanistan-training-commander

21. 21. Michael Flynn, Matt Pottinger and Paul Batchelor, Fixing Intel, January 2010.

    https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Hot-Spots/docs/Tribalism/Afghan-Intel-Flynn-Jan2010.pdf

22. 22. House Armed Services Committee, Developments in Afghanistan, June 16, 2010, pp. 23–24; DIA, Flynn biography; CIA, Directors Gallery; DIA, August 2012 Syria information report; Al Jazeera, Flynn interview report, July 16, 2015; Congressional Record, March 8, 2023, pp. H1178–H1179 (reprinting the March 27, 2016 Los Angeles Times report).

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg61824/pdf/CHRG-111hhrg61824.pdf

    https://www.dia.mil/About/History/Directors-of-DIA/LTG-Michael-T-Flynn-USA/

    https://www.cia.gov/legacy/headquarters/directors-portrait-gallery/

    https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/7/16/retired-us-general-drones-cause-more-damage-than-good

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2023-03-08/pdf/CREC-2023-03-08-pt1-PgH1173.pdf

23. 23. FBI, 9/11 Review Commission report, pp. 89–91; NCIS Manual 3, §20-19; Government Accountability Office, GAO-16-133, appendix III.

    https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/final-9-11-review-commission-report-unclassified.pdf

    https://www.ncis.navy.mil/Portals/25/Documents/Media/Reading%20Room/NCIS%20Manuals/NCIS%20Manual%203.pdf?ver=9pUcCyxNKIQ0rjKYWSITOA%3D%3D

    https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-16-133.pdf

24. 24. Congress, Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act; DOJ OIG, The Department of Justice’s Terrorism Task Forces: Expanded Partnerships, June 2005.

    https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/COMPS-937

    https://oig.justice.gov/archives/reports/plus/e0507/results.htm

25. 25. Ninth Circuit, United States v. Rewald, 889 F.2d 836 (1989); Senate Foreign Relations Committee, The BCCI Affair: BCCI, the CIA and Foreign Intelligence, Senate Print 102-140, 1992; D.D.C., BCCI Holdings (Luxembourg), S.A. v. Khalil, 56 F. Supp. 2d 14, 1999; U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, Michael A. Hase guilty-plea announcement, September 26, 2011; FBI Special Agent Matthew T. Johnson, affidavit supporting the complaint in United States v. Rush, No. 1:26-mj-177, May 20, 2026; Associated Press, “Former CIA official found with gold bars reaches tentative plea deal after charge of salary theft”, September 12, 2026. The Rewald court rejected his claim that CIA directed or authorized his investor fraud. The BCCI findings establish CIA use and failures of dissemination, not that CIA ordered the secret takeover. Rush’s charged offense concerns salary theft; criminal conversion of the seized gold has not been adjudicated, and the reported plea agreement remained tentative.

    https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/889/836/354042/

    https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm

    https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/56/14/2449201/

    https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/dc/news/2011/sep/11-431.html

    https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.596235/gov.uscourts.vaed.596235.2.0.pdf

    https://apnews.com/article/7be1def515c9aa99326eab39cd8ff589

26. 26. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, nomination hearing of Leon Panetta, February 5, 2009, p. 13; DOJ OIG, Sentinel Audit II, Audit Report 07-03.

    https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hearings/111172.pdf

    https://oig.justice.gov/archives/reports/FBI/a0703/final.pdf

27. 27. FBI, National Security Higher Education Advisory Board announcement, September 15, 2005; The Biggest, Longest Hack; Which Team Is Which?.

    https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-appoints-national-security-higher-education-advisory-board

    https://gusquixote.com/articles/realdigs/the-biggest-longest-hack/index.html

    https://gusquixote.com/articles/gusquixote/which-team-is-which/

28. 28. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Review of the Unauthorized Disclosures of Former National Security Agency Contractor Edward Snowden, declassified September 2016; Department of Justice, statement on the request to Hong Kong for Snowden’s provisional arrest, June 26, 2013.

    https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_review_declassified.pdf

    https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-statement-request-hong-kong-edward-snowden-s-provisional-arrest

29. 29. Inspectors General of DOJ, DOD, CIA, NSA and ODNI, Unclassified Report on the President’s Surveillance Program, July 10, 2009, pp. 1–11, 27–36; CIA Office of Inspector General, Review of the President’s Surveillance Program, Volume II, pp. 7–8.

    https://www.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/2018-04/s0907.pdf

    https://oig.justice.gov/archives/reports/2016/PSP-01-08-16-vol-2.pdf

30. 30. Pub. L. 112-239, §1078; U.S. Agency for Global Media, Smith–Mundt FAQ.

    https://www.congress.gov/112/plaws/publ239/PLAW-112publ239.pdf

    https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/oversight/legislation/smith-mundt-faqs/

31. 31. Department of Defense, Information Operations Roadmap, October 30, 2003, printed p. 26.

    https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Other/Information_Operations_Roadmap_30_October_2003.pdf

32. 32. Contemporary Hastings email report; FBI, Michael Hastings file; Los Angeles County coroner report.

    https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hastings-crash-emails-20130621-story.html

    https://vault.fbi.gov/michael-hastings/Michael%20Hastings%20Part%2001%20%28Final%29

    https://documents.latimes.com/coroner-report-michael-hastings/

33. 33. House Judiciary Committee, Petraeus-investigation hearing; Senator Charles Grassley, FBI-handling inquiry; KKR, appointment announcement.

    https://www.congress.gov/113/chrg/CHRG-113hhrg80973/CHRG-113hhrg80973.pdf

    https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-presses-holder-mueller-answers-fbis-handling-petraeus-matter

    https://media.kkr.com/news-details?news_id=28fe16dd-234f-4c14-892d-fa6fb8909e95&type=1

34. 34. DOJ, Snowden charge chronology; Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, Section 215 report; ACLU v. Clapper.

    https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-statement-request-hong-kong-edward-snowden-s-provisional-arrest

    https://documents.pclob.gov/prod/Documents/OversightReport/cf0ce183-7935-4b06-bb41-007d1f437412/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Records_Program%20-%20Completed%20508%20-%2011292022.pdf

    https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/14-42/14-42-2015-05-07.html

35. 35. DIA, unclassified clearance letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; White House, May 8, 2017 press briefing; Michael Flynn, amended OGE disclosure; Flynn Intel Group/Inovo contract; FARA supplemental statement.

    https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/imo/media/doc/DIA%20to%20OGR%20unclassified%20cover%20letter.pdf

    https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/daily-press-briefing-press-secretary-sean-spicer-050817/

    https://altgov2.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Flynn-278e-3Aug2017.pdf

    https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6406-Exhibit-AB-20170307-2.pdf

    https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6406-Supplemental-Statement-20170307-1.pdf

36. 36. Biggs filed pleading; DOJ, conviction and sentencing; House January 6 Committee, Jones deposition; White House, January 20, 2025 clemency proclamation; The Atlantic, “Breaking Free From Alex Jones”, April 17, 2026.

    https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/Joseph%20Biggs%20Opposition%20to%20Motion%20to%20Revoke%20Pretrial%20Release.pdf

    https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/two-leaders-proud-boys-sentenced-prison-seditious-conspiracy-and-other-charges-related-us

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000038858/pdf/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000038858.pdf

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/granting-pardons-and-commutation-of-sentences-for-certain-offenses-relating-to-the-events-at-or-near-the-united-states-capitol-on-january-6-2021/

    https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2026/04/breaking-free-from-alex-jones/686842/

37. 37. Epstein–Barak business relationship; Carbyne, 2022 investor announcement; DOJ, OPR report, p. 169; FBI, classified external-partner email.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/jeffrey-epstein-was-ehud-baraks-business-partner-as-late-as-2015-report/

    https://carbyne.com/resources/press/carbyne-raises-56-million-in-series-c/

    https://www.justice.gov/multimedia/Court%20Records/CA%20Florida%20Holdings%2C%20LLC%2C%20Publisher%20of%20the%20Palm%20Beach%20Post%20v.%20Aronberg%2C%20No.%2050-2019-CA-014681-XXXX-MB%20%28Fla.%2015th%20Cir.%20Ct.%202019%29/059.pdf

    https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01683701.pdf

38. 38. Federal Register, 91 FR 57773, September 10, 2026.

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-09-10/pdf/2026-18589.pdf