New York-Going through a storage locker the other day, I dug up a lot of stuff from my personal archives in the early post-9/11 period. I collected lots of odds and ends back then thinking they’d be of historical import…
Category: 9/11
Infamy Slept Here
Paterson- New York magazine occasionally runs a segment of their real estate section called “Fame Slept Here” about astronomically priced homes for sale on the NYC market that were inhabited by all manner of celebrity past and present. I’ve spent parts…
An Historical Tour of Jihadi New York
New York- Yesterday for the 11th anniversary of 9/11 I decided to do something a bit off the beaten path. Though New York City was the site of the attacks, no other part of the ‘planes operation’ timeline is known…
A Decade of War and Peace
Barcelona- Partly out of boredom and partly out of the itch to simply create something new out of old, I threw together this photo montage over the weekend. In this era of digital photography where one shoots thousands of frames…
The Fabled City
New York- In sorting through some old belongings today I found a couple of now ancient-seeming portfolios which I went to a lot of trouble to make at the tail end of the portfolio era. In what turned out to…
Such Great Heights
New York- I was doing some writing yesterday about my experiences in Afghanistan and Central Asia in the months after 9/11. Delving into the assassination of Massoud, the death of an Italian colleague, meeting the Taliban, and all of the…
The Eleventh Day
Thira- Just finished reading The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, a masterful account of 9/11 and was thrilled to see one of my articles was used as source material for the bit about Hamburg’s Mahmoun Darkazanli (pp.275-276)…
Awlaki Dead, His Mosque Quietly Lives On
Thira- Since supposedly Awlaki is finally really dead if we’re to believe the Yemeni Defence Ministry, I decided to put up some images of al-Ribat al-Islami, the mosque where he preached before 9/11 in my old hometown of San Diego,…
From Paris to Piraeus
Paris & Athens- Firstly I want to thank Jean-Luc Marret and the staff of his Fondation de la Recherche Stratégique for hosting me and allowing me to speak at their global terrorsim conference yesterday. The title of my talk was…
Daylight in Paris
Paris- I will be speaking at Maison de la Chimie tomorrow for the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique’s conference entitled “Dix ans après les attentats du 11 septembre 2001: bilan et perspectives de la lutte contre le terrorisme.” I will…
My Ten Year Photography Retrospective of Ground Zero New York
New York- What began as one horrific day turned into a decade long quest. 9/11 did not change the course of my life, it merely accelerated it at hyper speed. In the weeks before the suicide attacks on New York,…
9/11/2011-Dedication Day
The Sun Sets on 9/11/2001
New York- In advance of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I scanned a number of never before seen images that I shot on that ashen evening a decade ago. I knew this day would eventually come but it is all…
Said Bahaji Ten Years After 9/11
Barcelona- I have written an extensive profile of Said Bahaji, one of the last members of the Hamburg cell still on the run (the other being Zakariya Essabar) in the new issue of Militant Leadership Monitor. Bahaji was a core…
Retracing Mohammed Atta’s Footsteps in Catalunya
Tarragona- I went delving into Mohammed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh’s mysterious doings in July 2001 here in Spain’s fiercely autonomous Catalunya region. After taking a RENFE train down the coast to the ancient Roman city of Tarraco (Tarragona), I…
From #2 to #1: Ayman al-Zawahiri and the question of al-Qaeda’s Leadership Succession
New York- So bin Laden is dead, sunk to the bottom of the Arabian Sea in a weighted body bag. What comes next for al-Qaeda? A lot of assumptions come into play, the foremost of which is that the angry…
Pakistani TV Coverage of Abbottabad
New York- There is some interesting coverage on a few of the global Pakistani satellite channels (if you comprehend Urdu to a degree) of the Abbottabad raid. Highlights include what appears to be the tail of the downed Navy SEAL…
Buh Bye
New York- A-B-C-ya!
Coming Home
New York- Following six weeks of African adventure of all sorts, it felt alright to return to New York (before turning right around and heading to Washington for Jamestown’s MENA conference) with all of the difficult readjustment that entails. I’ve…
The Truth Left Behind-The Debut of the Pearl Project
Washington D.C.- This morning the Pearl Project- an investigation into the murder of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan nine years ago-debuts today and I’m proud to say it received top billing on today’s Washington Post homepage. I worked on…
Cutting the Fuse in the Capitol
Washington D.C.- The University of Chicago’s Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST) and the New America Foundation hosted a conference in the Capitol’s subterranean auditorium entitled “Cutting the Fuse: Moving Beyond the War on Terror” which was a day-long…
Progress at Ground Zero/WTC
New York- The new tower in what was referred to as “the pit” for so many years in lower Manhattan is steadily rising above the construction fence that surrounds it. I’m still standing by my assessment that the entire complex…
The Never Ending 9/11 Story…
New York- After flying over 24 hours (including a brief layover in Kuwait) from Kuala Lumpur to Queens on September 10th, I wound up at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan for yet another 9/11 anniversary. As someone who documented the…
One Night in Singapore
Singapore- After finally moving on from KL, I’m passing though Singapore’s Little India for a night en route to Bali. Little India (Little Tamil Nadu) is probably the most sanitized Indian neighborhood on the globe and not bad for it.…
The Looming Towers
Kuala Lumpur- I’m finally done after two weeks here in KL, much more time than I intended on spending and well worth it. I’ve been researching about the January 2000 AQ summit in the suburbs and a few other things…
August Issue of Militant Leadership Monitor Out
Kuala Lumpur- The new issue of MLM is out and online at Jamestown for subscribers. I have an article about the life and connections of Hamburg’s slippery Mamoun Darkazanli and briefs on the IMU finally confirming the death of Tahir…
“Little Arabia” and the “Planes” Operation
Bangkok- I took a very interesting meander through Bangkok’s bustling “Little Arabia” cluster today in more of my seemingly never ending investigation into the road to 9/11 and more specifically following in the footsteps of the so-called San Diego cell…