Before September 11, had al-Qaeda attacked U.S. interests?
Yes, repeatedly. In 1995, a car bomb outside the Saudi National Guard building in Riyadh killed seven people, five of them Americans. In 1998, simultaneous bombings at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. In Yemen in 2000, a small boat laden with explosives hit the destroyer U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors. Other al-Qaeda plots—such as 1995 plans to simultaneously blow up a dozen American airliners over the Pacific and to reportedly crash a plane into CIA headquarters—were uncovered before they could be executed.
