This timeline is meant to be a comprehensive resource for anyone attempting to understand 9/11 and the “war on terrorism” in general. Polls show that Americans are extremely uninformed about 9/11. A third of Americans can’t even correctly guess the year 9/11 took place and about half of all Americans mistakenly believe Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks.
But it is vital for everyone to understand 9/11, what led to it, and what the fallout from it has been. Terrorism directly and indirectly affects our lives in many ways and dominates the political discourse. Those of us working on the 9/11 timeline are striving to boil the news on terrorism down to a reasonable level so citizens can stay well informed.
We strive to be objective and keep any layers of interpretation as thin as possible. If you see specific examples of bias anywhere in the timeline, please point them out so we can make changes. But at the same time, we unabashedly focus on failures, problems, and controversies instead of success stories. That’s because those are the things we need to learn from and fix and hold people responsible for when necessary.
9/11 and terrorism generally are flashpoints for what people call “conspiracy theory.” This 9/11 investigative project contains no conspiracy theories. In fact, it does not offer any theories at all. Rather it simply lays out the facts so readers can come to their own conclusions. Biases may show at times because no human being is completely objective and judgments have to be constantly made; for instance, to include this particular fact or that one when editing decisions have to be made to keep the length down. We rely on each other and ask readers to point out when we are missing important facts or skewing the information.
But while we strive for objectivism, we dedicate many hours of our free time to this work because we are passionate about uncovering the truth and fighting the spin and lies on these highly politicized issues. No matter what you may believe about what happened on 9/11, even after five years it is obvious to anyone who looks at this timeline that there are still too many questions, contradictions in the official story, and efforts by the government to obfuscate the record. If politicians and mainstream journalists fail to follow through on pursuing every lead wherever it may go, then it’s up to ordinary citizens to take on the so-called fourth estate’s responsibility to provide oversight.
This timeline is extremely long. It’s chock-full of information and may be difficult to get through. You may want to tackle a bit at a time (and if you’re impatient, start from around July 2001 to get to the “good stuff”). But 9/11 was possibly one of the most pivotal events in world history, and its impact will be felt on everyone for years to come. You owe it to yourself to go beyond the sound bites and the simplified official story. This is an extremely complicated story with numerous players and motives. Not everything makes sense or fits neatly together. It’s a story full of espionage, deceit, and brazen lies. We must not remain ignorant and passive when so much is currently at stake.
Sources
We believe that in hindsight sometimes the most important news is not necessarily what makes the front pages of the newspapers. There is much the mainstream media has reported but not highlighted. One of the strengths of this timeline is that it contains important nuggets of information that have been rescued from the obscurity of back page reporting and placed in their proper historical contexts.
I have personally read over 7,000 articles in making this timeline, and other volunteers have read still more articles. What we have discovered is that, to a surprising degree, the mainstream media does cover an incredible amount, it’s just that many stories don’t get wide coverage. For instance, there may be a very important story that only appears in the Seattle Times or Vanity Fair magazine.
As a result, we made a decision very early on to limit our sources to so-called “mainstream” news organizations. Although there is great reporting in the alternative media, we don’t want people to reject the important information in this timeline because of controversies about sourcing. And the fact is that, for the most part, only mainstream media organizations have the resources necessary to do front line reporting. While things may be changing, bloggers and such are still mostly limited to commenting and analyzing mainstream reporting.
So what do we mean by “mainstream?” Mainly, we look at newspapers and magazines in the United States and Europe. We also consider information on television, cable, movies, books, government documents, and so forth. What we try to avoid are blatantly partisan publications where it is hard to tell where the hard reporting ends and the editorializing begins. However, if an important figure gave a pivotal interview to a blatantly partisan publication we could still use that unless there was some reason to believe the comments of that person had been doctored or misquoted.
Of course, no publication is free of bias, so we try to use common sense. For instance, a story in a Pakistani newspaper that reflects poorly on Pakistan would be more significant than the same story coming from an Indian newspaper (and vice versa).
Sourcing is a constant challenge since there is so much political divisiveness and spin in the mainstream media. Further, international terrorism is intimately tied with espionage, and both sub-state militant groups and the authorities trying to catch them rely on secrecy and subterfuge. So ultimately, we try our best to sort through the misinformation, inaccuracies, and outright lies, but we are aware it is impossible to achieve 100 percent accuracy. It is up to the reader to note the sourcing and judge the veracity of the information for themselves.
To that end, we strive to provide direct links to source articles so the reader can click on the link and judge the raw material if they desire to do so. When links to the original sources are not available, you can at least position your cursor over the link and get the author, title, and publication date so you can look up the article yourself.
Cooperation
I began working on this timeline in 2002 after coming across a 9/11 timeline at the From the Wilderness website. I was incredulous at some of the things I saw there because there were many stories there that I had never heard of despite being a close observer of the news. I went back to the original sources and was so intrigued by what I learned that I began my own timeline to help organize all the information I was learning.
Since that time, the timeline has continued to grow and grow. In 2004, Harper Collins published it as the book The Terror Timeline. However, while I am credited as the author of this timeline and that book, it has always been, and continues to be, a grassroots-level colloborative effort.
This timeline is a work in progress. We always welcome new volunteers. We need skilled researchers and writers to compile new entries (we’re drowning in thousands of unprocessed articles), editors, and proofreaders; people willing to mirror the entire website; newshounds; and java programmers. And of course, we can’t continue to exist without donations. If you’ve found the material on this website useful and wish for us to make it even better, please consider how you might be able to help.
Feel free to send constructive suggestions and comments using the contact page.—Paul Thompson
