Requirements for a Successful Attack

As some of the core operatives prepared to leave for the United States, al Qaeda's leaders could have reflected on what they needed to be able to do in order to organize and conduct a complex international terrorist operation to inflict catastrophic harm. We believe such a list of requirements would have included

• leaders able to evaluate, approve, and supervise the planning and direction of the operation;
• communications sufficient to enable planning and direction of the operatives and those who would be helping them;
• a personnel system that could recruit candidates, vet them, indoctrinate them, and give them necessary training;
• an intelligence effort to gather required information and form assessments of enemy strengths and weaknesses;
• the ability to move people; and
• the ability to raise and move the necessary money.

The information we have presented about the development of the planes operation shows how, by the spring and summer of 2000, al Qaeda was able to meet these requirements.

By late May 2000, two operatives assigned to the planes operation were already in the United States. Three of the four Hamburg cell members would soon arrive.