Donald Rumsfeld
The United States was attacked on September 11, 2001 by al Qaeda terrorists who hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them in coordinated strikes into both towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and its target was likely a prominent building in Washington, D.C., most probably either the Capitol Building or the White House. Within three hours of the start of the first hijacking and two hours after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld raised the defense condition signaling of the United States offensive readiness to DEFCON 3, the highest it had been since the Arab-Israeli war in 1973.
King Fahad Mosque (Culver City, California)
According to FBI documents and a CIA memo noted in a congressional report into the attacks of September 11, 2001, the hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi may have been in contact with Saudi diplomat Shaykh al-Thumairy, who was the chief imam at the King Fahad Mosque (most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals and several were not fluent in English and had little experience living in the West). According to the congressional report, the mosque was identified by the FBI as a site of “extremist-related activity both before and after September 11”. According top the commission, “several subjects of FBI investigations prior to September 11 had close connections to the mosque and are believed to have laundered money through this mosque to nonprofit organizations overseas affiliated with Usama Bin Ladin.”