September 11, 2001
After the 9/11 strikes on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon, some CTC staff were exempted from an order to evacuate the CIA headquarters building at Langley. They included the shift of the Global Response Center on the exposed sixth floor, which Black argued had "a key function in a crisis like this". Tenet finally agreed with Black that their lives would have to be put at risk.
The CTC obtained passenger lists from "the planes that had been turned into weapons that morning". " CTC analyst raced over to the printing plant" (where most CIA staff had been evacuated) and pointed out the names Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who they had "been looking for the last few weeks". This was the first "absolute proof" that the attacks were a Qaeda plot. (The CTC had first come across the names in connection with potential terrorist activity in the winter of 1999-2000 .)
Read more about this topic: Cofer Black, Director, CTC, 1999-2002
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