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.
September 11 attacks advance-knowledge conspiracy theories
On December 22, 2010, a United States Federal Judge signed a default judgment holding Iran, the Taliban and al-Qaeda liable following an open court hearing in which the evidence was produced by the plaintiffs' attorneys which they said showed that Iran assisted the hijackers. 9/11 commission members and witnesses who claimed they were Iranian defectors and members of Ministry of Intelligence and National Security and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards also testified during the hearing. The suit "Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al" was brought in 2001 by Fiona Havlish whose husband died in the North Tower. Abolghasem Mesbahi, who claimed he was a former Ministry of Intelligence operative in charge of Iran's espionage operations in Western Europe testified that he was part of a task force that designed contingency plans for unconventional warfare against the United States code-named "Shaitan dar Atash"/"Satan in Flames" which included crashing hijacked passenger airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House, and that in the summer of 2001 he received three coded messages telling him to activate the plan. An Iranian government memorandum was presented as evidence that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei had pre knowledge of the attacks. Several days after the ruling a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign ministry said charges that Iran "had a hand in planning the attacks and that one of al-Qaeda's members was present inside the country is baseless" and said "With the repetition of such claims to back its political aims the U.S. is putting the peace and security of the world in jeopardy,".