My 9/11 Timeline

December 6, 1993 - Sudan. Osama bin Laden's British Media Interview Published.
In an unprecedented first interview with Western media Osama bin Laden tells The Independent newspaper's Robert Fisk that: "When my Mujahideen were victorious and the Russians were driven-out, differences [between the guerilla movements] so I returned to road construction in Taif and Abha [Saudi Arabia]. I brought back the equipment I had used to build tunnels and roads for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan". I believe OBL is referring to the split of the seven-party alliance in Peshawar Pakistan in 1987/88, coinciding with Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's protege Khalid Sheikh Mohammed starting work at the Services Office in Peshawar. That assertion is corroborated by this translation of the notes first mentioning Al Qaidah, made during a meeting attended by OBL in August 1988 Peshawar. I believe OBL's 1993 assertion he was putting his army on the road to peace but OBL would be targeted by terrorist attacks in the following years. In the first attack on February 4, 1994, Libyan led attackers attempt to assassinate Osama bin Laden. They fire on worshippers at the mosque bin Laden usually attends, killing 16 and wounding 20 others, but bin Laden is not there. OBL believes the Egyptian Intelligence agency is behind that attack. In November 1995 four Saudi backed Yemeni mercenaries attempt to assassinate Osama bin Laden in Khartoum. In another attempt to assassinate Osama bin Laden the teenage son of OBL's Sudanese friend was entrapped in a gay-sex blackmail tape, possibly involving Egyptians. They forced him to place a radio (with a bomb inside) in his father's meeting room. The bomb did not detonate but the son's treachery was exposed, compelling the father to kill his son by cutting his throat. US pressure forced Sudan to expell OBL, prompting his further exile, first from Saudi and now Sudan - OBL was offered sanctuary in Afghanistan by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and moved there in May 1996. It's of note that CIA contractor Billy Waugh spent a lot of time in early 1990s Sudan spying on OBL. The US Special Forces veteran Billy Waugh enters my timeline in December 2019 when I discover evidence linking him to US Vietnam veteran David Dean. Dean was my parent's US sales agent who setup my September 1997 visit to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's front company in Yemen. Waugh admits working with Al Qaeda operators in Yemen, most likely during the 1994 north / south Yemen civil war when the USA was allied to the North while Saudi was backing South Yemen.

March/April 1994 - Manila, Philippines. A Very Significant Sliding-Door Moment.
During a four-month backpacking trip in the Philippines I'd noticed a restaurant in the Malate tourist area of Manila with the tail end of an airplane sticking out of the second storey as though it had crashed there. It perturbed me, thinking of Japanese kamikaze pilots and of its modern-day potential as a terrorist weapon. Walking in the tourist area one night I noticed a group of about four south Asian men, with smart casual and casual business attire. They were out of place amongst the throngs of tie-dyed t-shirt wearing backpackers and were of note. I watched them for a minute or so before they turned into the Hobbit House restaurant. I now think that was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Yousef and the rest of the Bojinka Plot terrorist cell. My father's US Vietnam veteran sales agent David Dean had very good contacts in Manila since running a go-go bar besides Clark air base in the Philippines during the latter years of the US's War in Vietnam. In 1997 Dean told me he still had enough influence to have solved some legal issues I'd encountered in 1994 Manila with one phone call (I'd been caught smoking a joint outside a Manila go-go bar but managed to resolve the matter myself). Dean's and KSM's activities in the Philippines are of significance I think, as seen on January 8, 2020; Dean committed suicide by drowning that day after I'd publicly linked him to CIA contractor Billy Waugh and Al Qaeda front companies in 1990s Yemen.

April 20, 1995 - London, England. A Queen's Award for Export Achievement.
My family's business JM Heaford Limited received their second (my father's third) Queen's Award for Export Achievement. In 1993/94 they had sold/installed a machine to the Hayel Saeed Anam Group of Yemen. Therefore that prestigious Queen's Award will have taken the machine sale to Yemen into account, a machine (installed by my brother Paul) I now believe was to furnish a terrorist cell's front company, just like the machine sale from April 1997 Chicago that I installed in the HSA Group's Yemen headquarters (17-miles south of Al Qaidah town) in September 1997.

January 1996 - A New York Court, USA & Qatar. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Indicted.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was indicted by the Southern District New York court on charges of his involvement in the Bojinka bomb plot in Manila. He was also wanted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing - in 1992 KSM had transferred funds from Qatar to the bombers in New York. With the SDNY indictment the FBI were planning to arrest KSM in Qatar where he'd worked for the government water department since 1993. KSM escaped capture by fleeing Qatar in early 1996; some FBI agents suspect his Qatari hosts had warned him.

August 1996 - Taiz, Yemen & Washington DC, USA. USA Helps Supply TNT Chemicals to Terrorist Financiers in Yemen.
The US embassy in Yemen and the State Department Washington help the Hayel Saeed Anam Group source one-year's industrial supply of chemicals that includes the key ingredients for TNT explosives manufacture. A HSA director was implicated in terrorism funding after 9/11, starting with a Muslim Brotherhood financing shell company in 1984 Switzerland. The chemicals order was split into two requests and the Italian spelling of Toluene was used, suggesting some subterfuge to hide the potential for TNT manufacture. They were to be delivered for the attention of Mohamed Salem, general manager of the HSA Group headquarters in Taiz. I met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two Pakistani chemical engineers in the HSA Group headquarters in September 1997, and their general manager Mohamed took me to a clandestine meeting by Al Qaidah town. It is possible my employer's US sales agent David Dean was involved in this via his Dean Printing Systems business that specialized in industrial quantities of printing chemicals including toluene. Detailed report linked here.

October 14, 1996 - Manchester, England. Rejoining the Family Export Business as a Service Technician.
I rejoined the family engineering export business as a field service technician at the request of my parents. I’d worked for them for five years previously, completing a mechanical fitter apprenticeship before leaving in 1993. I spent most of 1994/95 backpacking and by 1996 I was sub-contracting at British Petroleum's aircraft refuelling division (Air BP) at Manchester airport. Air BP offered me a coveted permanent contract in response to my parent's job offer, but my parents suggested they’d give me better job security (being family) and so I accepted their offer. Unbeknown to me my father had been involved in industrial espionage most of his career, certainly since the 1970s, and his own legitimate business JM Heaford Limited (est. 1982) was used as an MI6 front. Before making me redundant eighteen months later, in April 1998, I'd been involved with their clandestine work, or used as a patsy at least. In September 1997 my parents sent me to furnish 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's front company in Yemen, 17-miles south of Al Qaidah town.

March 18, 1997 - Cayman Islands, British Overseas Territory. Terrorism Financing Shenanigans.
Three directors of the multi-billion-dollar Hayel Saeed Anam Group global conglomerate become directors of a British Cayman Island offshore front company. It's called Atlantic Investments and was started by members of the Jersey tax haven-based St Clair-Morgan family, at least one of who has been accused of money laundering and illegal arms dealing. Jersey police have refused to investigate this matter as per their email pictured bottom left. JM Heaford Limited started using the Cayman Islands tax haven status around 2002 for both 'legal' tax avoidence and other illicit financing. 2024 Update: St Clair-Morgan obituary & a criminal investigation report (money laundering and illegal arms trading) have been deleted recently.

April 14, 1997 - McCormick Exhibition Center, Chicago, USA. Terrorism Facilitating Shenanigans.
Executives of a London front company called Longulf Trading (owned by the Hayel Saeed Anam Group) visited my employer's sales stand at the CMM industry exhibition. I demonstrated the machinery before they purchased one for about $100,000. The executives purchased an entire printing factory's worth of machinery (circa $3,000,000) in one morning at the exhibition, and said it was for an ill-defined end customer in Yemen whose name they made up on the spot. The end customer was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's terror cell's front company. One of the salesmen, ex-military Jerry Stephens, said: "There was something very suspicious about them". The other salesman, my brother Nigel, said: "Don't ask any questions, they just paid list price for our top machine". JM Heaford Limited's US sales agent David Dean and my father were away from the stand during the Longulf executives visit but I now believe Dean had set up this sale but did not want to be associated with it, even declining his sales agency commission of several thousand dollars. I think my father was aware of the significance of the sale if not the full context. We drank in Dave Dean's Sky Box that night, a private bar in a warehouse inside the cargo handling area of O'Hare International airport.

April 15-18, 1997 - Chicago, USA. Celebrations & Loose Ends.
Tuesday: A senior British diplomat visited the exhibition and our sales stand, possibly linked to the London based Longulf Trading's $3-million spending spree the day before given Longulf & HSA's British Establishment connections. My father dines seperately with Dean and others.
Wednesday: My father takes me to Morton's Steak resteraunt where he'd dined the night before. Morton's was an infamous CIA hangout in the 1990s.
Friday: Drinks at Dean's Sky Box where my father, Dave Dean and a man called Baron huddled talking at the far end of the bar for an hour or so. Dean's girlfriend and friends kept me occupied at the other end of the bar. The only thing I know about Baron is I wasn't allowed near him. Baron was the nom-de-guerre of Robert J Bechtoldt, a US Vietnam veteran who served with Billy Waugh in MACV SOG Special Forces and hence may have known Dean via Waugh. I have no evidence of a connection to MACV SOG's Baron but it is a possibility.

May 20, 1997 - London, England. Terrorist Financiers Invest Tens of Millions in British Business.
Using their Longulf Trading front company the Hayel Saeed Anam Group registers Cepac Limited with Companies House, starting the creation of Britain's largest cardboard packaging manufacturer. The HSA Group spent £10s of millions buying Britain's previous three largest producers and their factories. I have evidence that Cepac Limited was used to make a surreptitious payment of $1,000,000 to JM Heaford Limited in early 2000, a payment related to my visit to KSM's front company in September 1997 and the Hamburg Cell's December 1999 visit to Afghanistan.

June 11, 1997 - Logan Airport Boston, USA. I Predict the Method, Primary Target & Perpetrators of a 9/11 Style Attack.
From arriving at Logan airport Boston for a flight to Toronto, to handing my boarding pass to the flight attendant at the aircraft door I'd not encountered any security. I checked in with a credit card, didn't see any immigration control and didn't get searched, questioned, x-rayed or metal detected. The lack of security was so conspicuous I told the flight attendant; she replied: "Don't worry, that's normal". I perceived a 9/11 style attack on that nearly empty large plane flight. Using the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and an increase in suicide attacks as references, I predicted hijackers with basic pilot training would use a civilian airliner as a missile to strike the World Trade Center in New York city. I also knew I'd accidentally carried my box-cutters (a banned item) on two US domestic flights, and their potential use as a weapon. Inexplicably it was legal to carry 4" knives on US domestic flights upto and including September 11, 2001.

June 12, 1997 - Toronto, Canada. I Risk My Job to Give My First Urgent 9/11 Warning.
I was visiting Sunworthy wallpaper printers in Toronto for the first time on a service visit arranged by our Canadian sales agent Dave Horsman. I refused to start work until the factory manager Bob Wilton told me he’d pass my urgent 9/11 style attack warning from the previous day's flight, & my business card, to a security service contact he claimed to know. I spent a week at Sunworthy printers but there was no response to my warning. The sales agents Lisa, & Dave Horsman of Canflexographics Inc. took me to lunch and golf on my day off. I’d have expected myself to have repeated my plane hijacking fear to them too, but I don’t remember any specific conversation with either of them. Looking back, if Bob Wilton had contacted anyone with my warning, it was most likely Dave Horsman.

September 1997 - Manchester, England. Asked to Travel to Yemen on Short Notice
My parents, my father recently retired, asked me to visit them at home to very unusually arrange a business trip overseas from there. They told me another technician had refused to travel to Yemen due to British government warnings against going, then asked if I would go. I agreed readily but my mother insisted on getting an assurance for my safety; my father made some phone calls that made him grin widely as he told me my safety was absolutely guaranteed, but he wouldn't elaborate how or by who. A few days before my trip to Yemen JM Heaford Limited's senior service technician David Hughes asked to talk to me on the factory floor. It was a nonsensical conversation and in retrospect and in light of my November 1997 conversation with Hughes, I believe he was gauging my awareness of the significance of my upcoming Yemen visit. Pictured left is the only customer information I was given by the works manager Tony Preece before travelling, with a made-up name and no phone number or address. There was a contact name and machine number for a gravure proof press installed at a seperate location near Taiz in 1994 by my brother Paul. I was due to visit and service that 1994 machine installation during my 1997 trip but that was cancelled by the customer. My last instruction from Preece was that I'd be collected at Sanaa airport and taken to the customer's factory in Taiz.

September 20/21, 1997 - Taiz, Yemen. Travel to & Arrival at the Customer's Factory
After arriving in Sanaa on the overnight flight from Paris I missed my driver at the airport because he had the surname of the technician who'd refused to travel, not mine. A taxi driver agreed to take me the five hour ride to Taiz if his mate could come and despite me not having an address. We stopped on the outskirts of Taiz to ask the first person we saw for directions, but we only had the fake Genpak name, and my contact's name Ahmed Alrobaidi. The person looked puzzled at our information but then looked at me and said "that'll be the foreigners compound", on account of my blond hair / blue eyes I guess, and told us the way. We had found my customer - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's front company - within five minutes of arriving in Taiz by asking the first stranger we saw on the street. KSM's front company was inside the Hayel Saeed Anam Group's secure hilltop headquarters compound at PO Box 5302, a critical detail that I wouldn't discover for another eighteen years.
My arrival by taxi at the compound's entrance caused consternation amongst the numerous uniformed Pakistan national security guards. They told me to wait before closing the three meter high sheet metal gates on me. I briefly glimpsed a figure with an assault rifle peering over the compound's fence, the only time I saw any weapons during my visit. Eventually the HSA's general manager Mohamed came to the gate and immediately ushered me inside while I told him who I was and what I was there to do. He asked me to follow him but I said my bags were in the taxi and I had to settle my fare; Mohamed said the guards would take care of everything and instructed me to follow him to the main office block on the top of the hill. I was briefly introduced to 'the Chief', the HSA's managing director, then taken to the YemPak factory building where my bags were waiting. My missing the driver sent to collect me in Sanaa and making my own way to their factory again appeared to have caused some consternation and I was being treated accordingly, plus I kept mispronouncing Mohamed's name.
The machine I was installing (picture left) had already been unpacked and assembled meaning half my job had already been done. I was introduced to two Pakistani machine operators I was to train and they introduced the factory mechanic who'd assembled the flexographic printing plate mounting machine. They called him Dino, a clearly derogatory nickname I now know derived from the Darbi the Dinosaur children's cartoon - Dino was Ahmed al-Darbi, a former Guantanamo detainee described as Al Qaeda's mechanic in Yemen. I thanked and commended Dino on his work but he remained reserved and uncommunicative. The factory unit was a new build, about the size of a football pitch (pictured below, before and after the first air strikes / bomb damage of 2015) with one end occupied by brick built offices (the only section of the factory left standing in 2018). The offices were marked out-of-bounds to me and another engineer there, an Italian called Nicholas who was surveying the factory for the main Bielloni printing press installation. I spent Saturady and Sunday in the factory checking the machine's installation and commencing operator training. The two Pakistanis I was training identified themselves as chemical engineers, prompting me to say they were over qualified for operating the machine I was installing. The significance of their profession only became apparent to me twenty years later, when I discovered the HSA Group's August 1996 request (detailed above) for industrial quantities of TNT component chemcials and my strong suspicion those chemicals were used to manufacture the TNT for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, as I've reported here. Nicholas and I shared dinner in our hotel on the Sunday evening prior to his scheduled departure on Monday.

September 22-23, 1997 - HSA Group HQ, Yemen. Inspiring the 9/11 Plot with a Travel Warning
Monday: As the Italian engineer Nicholas was leaving the Yempak factory at about 10:00am he took me to one side and said in a hushed tone: "There's something very suspicious about this customer. They don't know anything about printing and don't have any product to produce". I admit I dismissed his caution, putting the situation down to foreign investment in Yemen's industrial development. As the operator training progressed that afternoon we chatted about my job and travel. They were very interested in my visits to the USA and asked me about visiting New York as tourists. I was quick with my response telling them NOT to visit the World Trade Center because I expected the same group who bombed it in 1993 to try again but using a hijacked civilian airliner as a kamikaze-piloted missile. I added advice to resist any domestic flight hijacking attempt too. I explained the lack of security I'd seen at Logan airport on June 11,1997 saying I could have carried a small machine gun (Uzi) aboard undetected. I highlighted the lack of cockpit security, the easy access to pilot training, and the incredible naivety regarding an attack on US soil that I saw around me. It was a short conversation and I didn't notice anything significant in their reaction to my travel advice.
Tuesday: The second operator casually raised the topic of my travel warning from the previous day, his first question being "What if they couldn't smuggle a gun onboard?". I picked up my box-cutters from a document/tool wallet I used and said I'd accidentally carried them aboard two domestic US flights undetected. I showed them the blade and said the threat of them being used against as air hostess would be enough to take control of an aircraft. "Where would they put the bomb?" was his second question. I said with frustration that the plane was the bomb, a fully fuelled 767 carrying over 80,000 litres of aviation fuel. His last question was what if the passengers fought back; I stressed the point of nearly empty planes on repositioning flights and said even if the plane just crashed, the terror aspect would still be achieved. Again it was a brief conversation where perhaps I did speak too candidly but only to validate the advice I was trying to give to international working graduates whose employer did their shopping for British machinery in Chicago. These weren't wild Jihadis I was passing this information to, it was men I considered my equal, if not betters (I was a technician, they were graduate engineers).

September 24, 1997 - HSA Group HQ, Yemen. The Initialization of the 9/11 Plot
Wednesday was a strange day, my gravure proofing press service visit to a nearby factory was cancelled by the customer and the operators I was supposed to be training were absent most of the day. I took the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with Dino the mechanic (Ahmed al-Darbi) showing him the intricacies of our machine and a few maintenance tasks. Dino remained reserved but displayed a subtle sense of humour. I liked him but the Pakistani operators were aloof, especially when they returned to the machine as my time with Dino was finishing. We all stood chatting for a few minutes, with the Pakistanis being far more forthcoming than over the previous few days. They confirmed they and the Pakistani security guards all attended the school (madrassa) in the on site mosque and confirmed the correct company name - YemPak - short for Yemen/ Pakistan collaboration. Dino struggled to give his nationality beyond being Arab; I now realise he was avoiding describing himself as 'Saudi'. They denigrated Dino in front of me too, saying they were involved in a more important project and that Dino was the youngest and least experienced. I defended Dino by saying I thought he was the most professionally and technically competent of us all. I asked Dino what he was working on and he said assembling the printing plate laser etching system in the brick office that were marked out-of-bounds. I asked to see it but he refused saying it was too dangerous before explaining that there were "wires everywhere". It struck me as odd but I didn't question it. I suspect that's where the TNT thermobaric bombs for the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were being manufactured. The Pakistani machine operators / chemistry graduates declined to give me their names despite my working with them for six-days and when I took the machine photo I had to promise not to photograph the operator's face. I now believe Wednesday September 24, 1997 was the day the 9/11 plot was initialized after my conversations the previous two day which will have been relayed to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. KSM was busy with other projects (planning the 1998 US embassy bombs I think) and immediately passed the mission to a sleeper cell in Germany led by Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mohammed Atta - The Hamburg Cell.

September 1997 - Hamburg, Germany. A Sleeper Cell is Activated in Europe
The 2004 9/11 Commission report describes 9/11 hijacker / pilot Ziad Jarrah abruptly switching from dentistry studies in north Germany to study aircraft engineering in Hamburg in September 1997. Based on my concurrent conversations in Yemen, I'd speculate that abrupt course change request was submitted on or after September 24. I believe the Hamburg Cell formed at this moment - its two ring leaders Mohammed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh both reportedly spending late 1997 / early 1998 overseas. I guess they travelled to Yemen to speak with KSM and potential muscle hijackers at the Base by Al Qaidah town. And to Dubai, 9/11's logistic hub and where I was sent in December 1997 and March 1998. The 100% facial recognition match between Yemeni national al-Shibh and my September 25 dinner companion Yousef in Yemen strongly supports my assertion, as detailed below.

September 25, 1997 - Taiz, Yemen. Vetted Over Dinner by a Hamburg Cell Associate
Thursday morning: There was little activity in the YemPak factory on my last full day in Yemen and so I was glad when I saw the managing director the Chief around midday. He was on the far side of the factory chatting with the man who the next morning he'd introduced to me as the Engineer - it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Chief came to talk to me alone, asking how my accommodation was and how the installation was going. He followed up with this question: "Did you really warn about planes crashing in New York?". I confirmed my warning adding how crazy the lack of US airport security was. The Chief considered my answer before changing subjects. He said I would be taken out to dinner and I could have the afternoon off, my host coming to my hotel about 4pm. I said great, looking forward to a good meal and some company, asking who my dinner companion would be. The Chief was elusive, only saying he was not an employee of his and I should just enjoy the meal. I asked for my hotel's phone number and this prompted some deliberation. They asked why I needed it; I explained I was a foreigner who didn't speak Arabic in an unfamiliar city and my hotel phone number would be handy if I got lost. After further deliberation they gave me the name and number noted in my customer database entry pictured left. My Taiz emergency contact's details were (by my spelling) 'Shawki Alariki - 9674 216301'. Alariki is Arabic for 'caring leader'; Sharqawi is the name of a Yemeni Guantanamo detainee accused of being Al Qaeda's personnel officer in 1990s Taiz. I think Shawki and Sharqawi are the same person, differentiated only by my dyslexic spelling. I recorded the Chief's name as Said Obadi in my database but twenty years later when I found my original contact's name Ahmed Alrobaidi in my database I remembered the Chief had said Alrobaidi and I'd asked if the al just mean the.; he was amused by my question and said yes and in my ignorance I dropped it from his surname, leaving just Obadi. I asked his nationality too and initially evasive (as al-Darbi had been) he settled on saying he was from Oman. Ibadis are one of the oldest Islamic sects and are almost exclusively Omani. I don't know if there's a link between al-Obaidi and al-Ibadis. Saeed Alrobaidi struck me as certainly having been educated in the British private school system due to his manners and grammar; he was a gentleman.
Thursday evening: Yousef arrived at my hotel and invited me to walk towards Al-Qahira Castle and a viewpoint over looking the city. He asked about my family and work as we ascended then became more philosophical as we watched sunset. Yousef gestured over the city with one arm and asked what I saw. Lost for an appropriate answer I was glad of a group of children interrupting us. They'd seen my camera and wanted me to take their photo. They were delightful children - happy and polite - and they raised our mood too. As we returned to my hotel for dinner we spoke about each generation's duty to leave a better world for the next, and the state of that world in the 1990s. I don't remember how the subject was raised but over dinner we discussed my travel warning given to the YemPak machine operators. But instead of the practicalities like weapons and bombs, we discussed the motivations for such an attack, the likelihood of it occurring, and the likely response. The justification I specifically remember discussing was the Palestine and Israel conflict because Yousef lamented the December 1995 assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Zionist extremist, describing it as "a lost last chance for peace". We both condemned Netanyahu as an obstacle to peace. Yousef asked if I wanted it to happen and my instant reply was "God no, it'd be an abhorrent act of mass murder, but someone will do it someday soon if US domestic security or foreign policy don't change drastically". Yousef appeared to agree with that answer before asking what I thought the US response would be. I'd only perceived one large but nearly empty plane being used but expected tens-of-thousands to be killed in and around the World Trade Center towers. I asked how could anyone respond to such an attack without first asking "Why?" and determining to fix the cause - US foreign policy. Yousef queried that by simply asking "Really?". and I conceded it'd be the start of a terrible cycle of violence rather than the closing act on empirical domination. My theory was the ideology of the recent suicide bus bombings in Israel would combine with the ambitions of the 1993 WTC bombers and a few willing attackers would crash one plane into the WTC towers. It was Yousef who asked what if more than one plane was used; I was taken aback by the potential for a mass attack that I hadn't considered. I suggested a second hijacked plane could be landed safely as a demonstration of restraint on the attacker's behalf and as a way to open negotiations. It was a theoretical and hypothetical discussion - not a call to arms or malign scheming. Yousef mourning Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and his agreeing such an attack would be an abhorrent act of mass murder were my takeaways from the conversation. I thought Yousef was a humanitarian who like me could see the reality of cause-and-effect in the post-Cold War era of the 1990s. I enjoyed our conversation and was surprised when Yousef excused himself early, before 8pm. I got an early night preparing for my journey home the next morning. I wasn't concerned about the nature of our conversation, and Yousef's calm and considered demeanour gave no cause for concern - I'd had a pleasant evening and informed discussion with a friend of the Chief at the end of an installation visit. Nearly twenty years later, in March 2016, I discovered Yousef's double using facial recognition software to compare my 1997 Yemen photos with images of the 9/11 accused, first the hijackers and then the Guantanamo detainees. Yemeni national Guantanamo prisoner Ramzi bin al-Shibh and my dinner companion Yousef were a 100% match but are not the same person. I suspect al-Shibh and Yousef are brothers or cousins.

September 26, 1997 - Taiz & Al Qaidah town, Yemen. Meeting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed & Visiting the Base
Friday, 10am: We should've departed Taiz by 8am to arrive in Sanaa two hours before my flight's departure but at 10am I was still sat in the YemPak factory waiting for my paperwork to be signed. I'd been collected from the hotel at 8:00am then seemingly abandoned in the factory, with people coming and going. Eventually I was taken up to the office block on the hill and into an upstairs reception room. My signed machine acceptance forms were waiting for me in the corner but something else was afoot. The Chief suggested a group photo and still thinking about catching my flight I said there was no need. But the room had filled up with each person carrying either a camera or something for me to wear, traditional Yemeni clothes and a jambiya - the large dagger worn under the navel. The Chief's suggestion was really an instruction. As the crowd finished dressing me a side door opened and the man I'd seen briefly the day before appeared. The door was closed behind him from the other side by what I describe as a hidden hand. The Chief introduced him, "This is the Engineer" he said. "If he's the engineer, why haven't we been introduced before?" I asked. The Chief replied, "He's working on other projects" and before I had chance to query further the photo was convened and suddenly he was beside me. Something that stuck in my mind was his shoes, about 4" high platform shoes that I immediately assumed were orthotic but now know they were something KSM wore frequently for photos due to his diminutive stature of about 5’ 4”. Photos were taken on both my camera and theirs then the group dispersed as quickly as it’d assembled and without ceremony. The Engineer hadn’t shaken my hand or even looked me in the eye the whole time. I was ushered down to a waiting SUV by Mohamed and finally my journey home was beginning, or so I thought. The video clip below details what happened after Mohamed and I had left the HSA Group compound, specifically our detour to an unscheduled meeting by Al Qaidah town.
Friday afternoon: After my brief visit to Al Qaidah town a different driver took me to Sanaa, arriving an hour after my flight had been due to depart, but true to Mohamed's word the plane had been delayed for me. I was whisked through an empty airport like a VIP and escorted to the plane waiting on the tarmac - we took off as soon as I sat down. My mind was racing with the events of the day. In retrospect I think if my visit to The Base by Al Qaidah town had lasted longer, perhaps a couple of hours, then the only way I'd have made it to Sanaa on time would've been a helicopter ride. As seen in the satellite image (left) Al Qaidah is only a couple of miles from Taiz international / military airport. The proximity of the airport also suggests to me that The Base - an enclosed valley with four small settlements - was not a military training facility but a sanctuary / transit area for Arab Mujahideen veterans returning from 1980s Afghanistan, setup by Osama bin laden and Yemeni General Ali Mohsen. General Mohsen recrutied Arab Mujahideen and visited OBL in 1980s Afghanistan. He's also late President Saleh's brother-in-law which hints towards why I think a helicopter may have been available to me if I'd passed my recruitment interview at The Base. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's support network was at state level: employed by the Qatari government, supplied via the State Department Washington and by Queen's Award winning British companies, and it seems Yemen's government too. But he was absolutely and without doubt hosted and financed by the multi-billion dollar British allied Hayel Saeed Anam Group - I saw that first hand. But it'd take me another twenty years to discover all that; back in September 26, 1997 Yemen and on my unscheduled detour, my only thoughts were about getting home without being kidnapped or beheaded.

September 27, 1997 - Manchester, England. My First Attempt to Report my Concerns Rebuffed
I made it home late Friday night and went to work Saturday morning to file my paperwork and start my holiday that I'd delayed to go to Yemen. Tony Preece was in his office and after passing my paperwork over I said there was something very strange about my visit and the customer, thinking specifically of the detour when on route to the airport the day before. Preece looked at me and smiled, saying, "It doesn't matter, they've already paid". I mentioned the cancelled service visit but got the same response. I tried to persist, stressing how serious I felt this was but Preece refused to listen, getting up and literally shooing me out of his office. This was the man who ten days earlier had sent me to what was Al Qaeda central, to a customer with a fake name, no telephone number and no address. Now Preece was flatly refusing to listen to my concerns from Yemen. It was that dereliction of duty by Preece that makes me think he was in someway complicit, as the senior service technician David Hughes appeared to be too - both working-parts of the clandestine operations of a British Secret Intelligence Service front company, JM Heaford Limited. I tried to raise it with David Hughes in October or November but when I asked who I could report my concerns to he advised never to report anything like that. He told me there were people whose job it was to lookout for things like that and raising concerns would only result in "your card being marked at airport security" he said. There was a conspicuous lack of family contact after or interest in my Yemen visit - no curious questions about my safety or the customer. It was odd and made no sense to me at the time, but it now appears I was the last person to know about my father's industrial espionage activities, and that I'd been used as their patsy in Yemen.

Oct 27-Nov 02, 1997 - Jakarta, Indonesia. Another Short-Notice & Unusual Business Trip

November 07, 1997 - Yemen. EVERYONE Knew About Al Qaeda's Presence in Yemen
In a 2012 media interview former US ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine said, "When I got there in 1997, there was already an Al Qaeda presence. We knew about it. The Yemenis knew about it. Everyone knew about it". She described their presence as,"these people were primarily foreign nationals. One of the best ways to describe the presence is that they were largely warehousing lower-level people in peripheral areas". Bodine's description matches what I saw in Taiz: Pakistani's literally warehoused (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's front company factory) in a peripheral area (a secure hilltop compund) that locals described as being "the foreigners compound".

November 15, 1997 - Florida/Arizona, USA. Future 9/11 Hijacker/Pilot Hani Hanjour Returns to Amercia & Resumes Flying Lessons

December 02, 1997 - Brooklyn New York, USA. My Last & Clearest 9/11 Warning

December, 1997 - JAFZ Dubai, UAE. Another Short-Notice & Unusual Business Trip

December, 1997 - Beirut, Lebanon. "KSM is Going to Hijack Some Planes & Use Them As Weapons"
A dissident Qatari former police chief living in exile warned veteran CIA agent Robert Baer that “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to hijack some planes”. Baer says he passed that warning on to his CIA counter parts but that ‘there was no interest’. In 1998 the Qatari dissident, Hamad bin Jasmin bin Hamad Al Thani was kidnaped (in Italy?) and illegally renditioned by Qatari agents. He was convicted (of what I’m not sure) in a Qatari court and imprisoned for ten years, until 2008. His judge and jury were the same government that employed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from 1993 to 96, right up until they helped KSM escape capture by US authorities in 1996. To add context, KSM was employed by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf in the infamous Service's Office in Peshawar, Pakistan from 1988-92. That’s when, in my opinion KSM buit his global terror network, knowing active jihadis and dormant sleeper cells. Hamad bin Jasmin bin Hamad Al Thani passed away in 2012.

Early 1998 - CIA Offices, USA. Robert Baer Passes 9/11 Intel to a Friend
A dissident Qatari former police chief living in exile warned veteran CIA agent Robert Baer that “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to hijack some planes”. Baer says he passed that warning on to his CIA counter parts but that ‘there was no interest’. In 1998 the Qatari dissident, Hamad bin Jasmin bin Hamad Al Thani was kidnaped (in Italy?) and illegally renditioned by Qatari agents. He was convicted (of what I’m not sure) in a Qatari court and imprisoned for ten years, until 2008. His judge and jury were the same government that employed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from 1993 to 96, right up until they helped KSM escape capture by US authorities in 1996. To add context, KSM was employed by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf in the infamous Service's Office in Peshawar, Pakistan from 1988-92. That’s when, in my opinion KSM buit his global terror network, knowing active jihadis and dormant sleeper cells. Hamad bin Jasmin bin Hamad Al Thani passed away in 2012.

February 20-24, 1998 - Manila, Philippines. Another Short-Notice & Unusual Business Trip

March, 1998 - JAFZ Dubai, UAE. A Very Unusual Return Business Trip

March, 1998 - London, Englnad. Another Short-Notice & Unusual Business Trip

October 31, 1999 - Egypt Air Flight 990, Atlantic Ocean. Passenger Plane Deliberately Crashed

December 1999 - Germany & Afghanistan. The Hamburg Cell Visit Afghanistan

Spring 2000 - Manchester, England. Questioned About an Unexplained $1,000,000 Payment

September 11, 2001 - Manchester, England. Shock and Awe

January 24, 2009 - Counter Terrorism Command, England. I Report my Vague Suspicions from 1997 Yemen
Aged 39 I finally realized my childhood dream of joining the amry; all that was left was for me to be attested - swear an Oath of allegience - to become a member of the British Territorial (Reserves) Army. I again risked all by reporting my experiences in 1997 Yemen to the Counter Terrorism Command in order to be able to take that Oath without reservation. I was telling them my suspision was only about the unscheduled meeting I was taken to and not the customer, but the moment I mentioned YemPak the line clicked and a different voice said, "Carry on". He heard the story of my detour and asked why I was suspisious of the men who'd attended that meeting. I replied the man at the head of the table looked like Osama bin Laden (tall, slim, well grown beard, practical clothing) at which point the call handler curtly cut the call short. I'd given my contact details but I never heard back. I served four years in the army, including six months in summer 2012 Helmand, stood next to Captain Harry Windsor with a load rifle in my hands a couple of times. That 2009 phone call when I claimed to have met Al Qaeda members in 1997 was possibly the last time I thought about Yemen again until 2014, during my research into our mission in Afghanistan.