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.
Fawaz al-Nashimi
On June 21, 2006, a US intelligence contractor in Virginia, IntelCenter, released a 54-minute Al-Qaeda video in which Nashimi justifies attacking the Western World. Several days before on June 13, an audio webpost supposedly from Al-Qaeda claimed that Nashimi was to have been the 20th hijacker on United Airlines Flight 93, but was unable to participate at the planned time.