On September 11, 2001, al Qaeda terrorists crashed two aircraft into New York’s World Trade Center, killing 2,753 people. A third commercial airplane struck the Pentagon, killing 184 people, while a fourth airliner crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing 40 more. It was the first foreign strike on the US mainland in two centuries.
Formally titled ‘The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States’, the report was issued on July 22, 2004. Also known as ‘The 9/11 Commission Report’, it revealed how did the attacks happen and how can the nation avoid such tragedies in the future. The report shed light upon the money trails and the flow of assets as it revealed that then al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden and his aides did not need a very large sum to finance their planned attack on America.
The report mentioned that terrorists moved, stored and spent their money in ordinary ways but it remained unidentified by the mechanisms in place in the country at the time. The United States initially thought Bin Laden financed al Qaeda’s expenses through a vast personal inheritance as he purportedly inherited approximately $300 million when his father died.
Before 9/11, intelligence agencies had estimated that it cost al Qaeda about $30 million per year to sustain its activities. The report provided no evidence that any foreign government—or foreign government official supplied any funding to al Qaeda. It also revealed that al Qaeda appeared to have relied on a core group of financial facilitators who raised money from a variety of charities, donors and other fund-raisers.
The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States were the work of 19 operatives who were funded by al Qaeda, according to an investigation by the US government. The investigation provided no credible evidence that any person in the U.S. gave the hijackers substantial financial assistance.
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