-Caveat Lector-
http://www.msnbc.com/news/760647.asp?cp1=1
The Hijackers We Let Escape
The CIA tracked two suspected terrorists to a Qaeda summit in
Malaysia in January 2000, then looked on as they re-entered
America and began preparations for September 11. Inside what
may be the worst intelligence failure of all. A NEWSWEEK exclusive
By Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman
NEWSWEEK
June 10 — Kuala Lumpur is an easy choice if you’re looking to lie
low. Clean and modern, with reliable telephones, banks and Internet
service, the Malaysian city is a painless flight from most world
capitals—and Muslim visitors don’t need visas to enter the Islamic
country.
THAT MAY EXPLAIN WHY Al Qaeda chose the sprawling
metropolis for a secret planning summit in early January 2000.
Tucked away in a posh suburban condominium overlooking a Jack
Nicklaus-designed golf course, nearly a dozen of Osama bin
Laden’s trusted followers, posing as tourists, plotted future terrorist
strikes against the United States.
At the time, the men had no idea that they were being closely
watched—or that the CIA already knew some of their names. A few
days earlier, U.S. intelligence had gotten wind of the Qaeda
gathering. Special Branch, Malaysia’s security service, agreed to
follow and photograph the suspected terrorists. They snapped
pictures of the men sightseeing and ducking into cybercafes to
check Arabic Web sites.
What happened next, some U.S. counterterrorism officials say,
may be the most puzzling, and devastating, intelligence failure in the
critical months before September 11. A few days after the Kuala
Lumpur meeting, NEWSWEEK has learned, the CIA tracked one of
the terrorists, Nawaf Alhazmi, as he flew from the meeting to Los
Angeles. Agents discovered that another of the men, Khalid
Almihdhar, had already obtained a multiple-entry visa that allowed
him to enter and leave the United States as he pleased. (They later
learned that he had in fact arrived in the United States on the same
flight as Alhazmi.)
Yet astonishingly, the CIA did nothing with this information.
Agency officials didn’t tell the INS, which could have turned them
away at the border, nor did they notify the FBI, which could have
covertly tracked them to find out their mission. Instead, during the
year and nine months after the CIA identified them as terrorists,
Alhazmi and Almihdhar lived openly in the United States, using their
real names, obtaining driver’s licenses, opening bank accounts and
enrolling in flight schools—until the morning of September 11, when
they walked aboard American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into
the Pentagon.
CLEAR FAILURE
Until now, the many questions about intelligence shortcomings
leading up to the attacks have focused on the FBI’s clear failure to
connect various vague clues that might have put them on the trail of
the terrorists. Last week, in the aftermath of Minnesota agent
Coleen Rowley’s scathing letter ripping the FBI for ignoring warnings
from the field, Director Robert Mueller announced a series of
reforms aimed at modernizing the bureau.
All along, however, the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center—base
camp for the agency’s war on bin Laden—was sitting on information
that could have led federal agents right to the terrorists’ doorstep.
Almihdhar and Alhazmi, parading across America in plain sight,
could not have been easier to find. NEWSWEEK has learned that
when Almihdhar’s visa expired, the State Department, not knowing
any better, simply issued him a new one in June 2001—even though
by then the CIA had linked him to one of the suspected bombers of
the USS Cole in October 2000. The two terrorists’ frequent meetings
with the other September 11 perpetrators could have provided
federal agents with a road map to the entire cast of 9-11 hijackers.
But the FBI didn’t know it was supposed to be looking for them
until three weeks before the strikes, when CIA Director George
Tenet, worried an attack was imminent, ordered agency analysts to
review their files. It was only then, on Aug. 23, 2001, that the agency
sent out an all-points bulletin, launching law-enforcement agents on
a frantic and futile search for the two men. Why didn’t the CIA share
its information sooner? “We could have done a lot better, that’s for
sure,” one top intelligence official told NEWSWEEK. Hazel
Evergreen, a condominium complex in Kajang, Malaysia, where two
September 11 hijackers stayed during a visit last year
The CIA’s belated and
reluctant admission now makes it impossible to avoid the question
that law-enforcement officials have tried to duck for weeks: could we
have stopped them? Tenet has vigorously defended his agency’s
performance in the months before the attacks. In February he told a
Senate panel that he was “proud” of the CIA’s record. He insisted
that the terrorist strikes were not due to a “failure of attention, and
discipline, and focus, and consistent effort—and the American
people need to understand that.” Yet last week intelligence officials
acknowledged that the agency made at least one mistake: failing to
notify the State Department and the INS, so the men could have
been stopped at the border.
AT A LOSS
CIA officials, who have been preparing for the start of Senate
intelligence committee hearings this week, seem at a loss to explain
how this could have happened. The CIA is usually loath to share
information with other government agencies, for fear of
compromising “sources and methods.” CIA officials also say that at
the time Almihdhar and Alhazmi entered the country in January
2000, they hadn’t yet been identified as bin Laden
terrorists—despite their attendance at the Malaysia meeting. “It
wasn’t known for sure that they were Al Qaeda bad-guy operators,”
says one official.
CIA officials also pointout that FBI agents assigned to the CIA’s
Counterterrorism Center were at least informed about the Malaysia
meeting and the presence of Almihdhar and Alhazmi at the time it
occurred. But FBI officials protest that they only recently learned
about the most crucial piece of information: that the CIA knew
Alhazmi was in the country, and that Almihdhar could enter at will.
“That was unforgivable,” said one senior FBI official. This led to a
series of intense and angry encounters among U.S. officials in the
weeks after September 11. At one White House meeting last fall,
Wayne Griffith, a top State Department consular official, was so
furious that his office hadn’t been told about the two men that he
blew up at a CIA agent. (Griffith declined to comment.)
Khalid Almihdhar (left), and Nawaf Alhazmi (right) are believed to
have been on board American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into
the North Tower of the World Trade Center
To bolster their case, FBI
officials have now prepared a detailed chart showing how agents
could have uncovered the terrorist plot if they had learned about
Almihdhar and Alhazmi sooner, given their frequent contact with at
least five of the other hijackers. “There’s no question we could have
tied all 19 hijackers together,” the official said.
GETTING A BREAK
It was old-fashioned interrogation and eavesdropping that first
led U.S. intelligence agents to the Qaeda plotters. In the summer of
1998, only a couple of weeks after bin Laden operatives truck-
bombed two U.S. Embassies in Africa, the FBI got a break: one of
the Nairobi bombers had been caught. Muhammad Rashed Daoud
al-Owhali, a young Saudi from a wealthy family who became a fierce
bin Laden loyalist, was supposed to have killed himself in the blast.
Instead, he got out of the truck at the last moment and fled. He was
arrested in a seedy Nairobi hotel, waiting for his compatriots to
smuggle him out of the country.
Questioned by the FBI, al-Owhali made a detailed confession.
Among the information he gave agents was the telephone number
of a Qaeda safe house in Yemen, owned by a Yemeni bin Laden
loyalist named Ahmed Al-Hada (who, it turns out, was also
Almihdhar’s father-in-law).
U.S. intelligence began listening in on the telephone line of the
Yemen house, described in government documents as a Qaeda
“logistics center,” where terrorist strikes—including the Africa
bombings and later the Cole attack in Yemen—were planned.
Operatives around the world phoned Al-Hada with information,
which was then relayed to bin Laden in the Afghan mountains.
In late December 1999, intercepted conversations on the
Yemen phone tipped off agents to the January 2000 Kuala Lumpur
summit, and to the names of at least two of its participants:
Almihdhar and Alhazmi. The condo where the meeting took place
was a weekend getaway owned by Yazid Sufaat, a U.S.-educated
microbiologist who had become a radical Islamist and bin Laden
follower. He was arrested last December when he returned from
Afghanistan, where he had served as a field medic for the Taliban.
Sufaat’s lawyer says his client let the men stay at his place because
“he believes in allowing his property to be used for charitable
purposes.” But he claims Sufaat had no idea that they were
terrorists. Suspected hijackers Nawaq Alhamzi, and Ziad Samir
Jarrah stayed at this hotel in Laurel, Md., shortly before the attacks
‘THERE WAS NO SHOW OF CONCERN’
After the meeting, Malaysian intelligence continued to watch the
condo at the CIA’s request, but after a while the agency lost interest.
Had agents kept up the surveillance, they might have observed
another beneficiary of Sufaat’s charity: Zacarias Moussaoui, who
stayed there on his way to the United States later that year. The
Malaysians say they were surprised by the CIA’s lack of interest
following the Kuala Lumpur meeting. “We couldn’t fathom it, really,”
Rais Yatim, Malaysia’s Legal Affairs minister, told NEWSWEEK.
“There was no show of concern.”
Immediately after the meeting, Alhazmi boarded a plane to
Bangkok, where he met a connecting flight to Los Angeles on Jan.
15, 2000. Since the CIA hadn’t told the State Department to put his
name on the watch list of suspected terrorists, or told the INS to be
on the lookout for him, he breezed through the airport and into
America. Almihdhar was also on the plane, though CIA agents did
not know it at the time.
The CIA is forbidden from spying on people inside the United
States. Had it followed standard procedure and passed the baton to
the FBI once they crossed the border, agents would have
discovered that Almihdhar and Alhazmi weren’t just visiting
California, they were already living there. The men had moved into
an apartment in San Diego two months before the Kuala Lumpur
meeting.
The CIA’s reluctance to divulge what it knew is especially odd
because, as 2000 dawned, U.S. law-enforcement agencies were on
red alert, certain that a bin Laden strike somewhere in the world
could come at any moment. There was certainly reason to believe
bin Laden was sending men here to do grave harm. Just a few
weeks before, an alert Customs inspector had caught another
Qaeda terrorist, Ahmed Ressam, as he tried to cross the Canadian
border in a rental car packed with explosives. His mission: to blow
up Los Angeles airport. Perhaps agency officials let down their
guard after warnings about a Millennium Eve attack never
materialized. Whatever the reason, Alhazmi and Almihdhar fell off
their radar screen.
FAST FOOD AND STRIP CLUBS
Free to do as they pleased, the 25-year-old Alhazmi and 26-
year-old Almihdhar went about their terrorist training in southern
California. They told people they were buddies from Saudi Arabia
hoping to learn English and become commercial airline pilots. The
cleanshaven Alhazmi and Almihdhar played soccer in the park with
other Muslim men and prayed the required five times a day at the
area mosque. They bought season passes to Sea World and dined
on fast food, leaving the burger wrappers strewn around their
sparsely furnished apartment. And, despite their religious
convictions, the men frequented area strip clubs. Neighbors found it
odd that the men would rarely use the telephones in their apartment.
Instead, they routinely went outside to make calls on mobile phones.
People who knew the men recall that they couldn’t have been
more different. Alhazmi was outgoing and cheerful, making friends
easily. He once posted an ad online seeking a Mexican mail-order
bride, and worked diligently to improve his English. By contrast,
Almihdhar was dark and brooding, and expressed disgust with
American culture. One evening, he chided a Muslim acquaintance
for watching “immoral” American television. “If you’re so religious,
why don’t you have facial hair?” the friend shot back. Almihdhar
patted him condescendingly on the knee. “You’ll know someday,
brother,” he said.
Neither man lost sight of the primary mission: learning to fly
airplanes. Almihdhar and Alhazmi took their flight lessons seriously,
but they were impossible to teach. Instructor Rick Garza at Sorbi’s
Flying Club gave both men a half-dozen classes on the ground
before taking them up in a single-engine Cessna in May. “They were
only interested in flying big jets,” Garza recalls. But Garza soon gave
up on his hapless students. “I just thought they didn’t have the
aptitude,” he says. “They were like Dumb and Dumber.”
Had law-enforcement agents been looking for Alhazmi and
Almihdhar at the time, they could have easily tracked them through
bank records. In September 2000, Alhazmi opened a $3,000
checking account at a Bank of America branch. The men also used
their real names on driver’s licenses, Social Security cards and
credit cards. When Almihdhar bought a dark blue 1988 Toyota
Corolla for $3,000 cash, he registered it in his name. (He later
signed the registration over to Alhazmi, whose name was on the
papers when the car was found at Dulles International Airport on
September 11.) Of course, agents might have used another
resource to pinpoint their location: the phone book. Page 13 of the
2000-2001 Pacific Bell White Pages contains a listing for “ALHAZMI
Nawaf M 6401 Mount Ada Rd. 858-279-5919.”
LOST IN THE FILES
By then, though, the case seems to have gotten lost deep in the
CIA’s files. But Almihdhar’s name and face surfaced yet again, in
the aftermath of the October 2000 bombing of the Cole. Within days
of the attack, a team of FBI agents flew to Yemen to investigate.
They soon began closing in on suspects. One was a man called
Tawfiq bin Attash, a.k.a. Khallad, a fierce, one-legged Qaeda fighter.
When analysts at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center in Langley, Va.,
pulled out the file on Khallad, they discovered pictures of him taken
at the Kuala Lumpur meeting. In one of the shots, he is standing
next to Almihdhar.
If, as the CIA now claims, it wasn’t certain that Almihdhar had
terrorist connections, it certainly knew it now. And yet the agency still
did nothing and notified no one.
In mid- to late 2000, Almihdhar left San Diego for good. It
appears that he spent the next several months bouncing around the
Middle East and Southeast Asia. While he was away, his visa
expired—a potentially big problem. Yet since the CIA was still not
sharing information about Almihdhar’s Qaeda connections, the State
Department’s Consular Office in Saudi Arabia simply rubber-
stamped him a new one.
Almihdhar returned to the United States on July 4, 2001, flying
into New York. He spent at least some of the time leading up to
September traveling around the East Coast and, at least once,
meeting with Mohamed Atta and other September 11 plotters in Las
Vegas.
A TICKET FOR SPEEDING
Meanwhile, Alhazmi, having flunked out of two California flight
schools, decided to try his luck in Phoenix in early 2001. There he
hooked up with another Qaeda terrorist in training, Hani Hanjour,
who eventually piloted Flight 77. In April 2001 Alhazmi headed east,
and was pulled over for speeding. Oklahoma State Trooper C. L.
Parkins ran Alhazmi’s California driver’s license through the
computer, checked to see if the car was stolen and made sure there
wasn’t a warrant out for Alhazmi’s arrest. When nothing came up,
he issued the terrorist two tickets, totaling $138, and sent him on his
way. (The tickets were not discovered until after 9-11.) Like
Almihdhar, Alhazmi eventually went east, spending time in New
Jersey and Maryland. On Aug. 25, he used his credit card to
purchase two tickets for Flight 77.
Two days earlier, CIA officials finally, and frantically, awoke to
their mistake. That summer, as U.S. intelligence picked up repeated
signals that bin Laden was about to launch a major assault, Tenet
ordered his staff to scrub the agency’s files, looking for anything that
might help them thwart whatever was coming. It didn’t take long to
discover the file on Almihdhar and Alhazmi. CIA officials checked
with the INS, only to discover that Almihdhar had traveled out of the
country, and was allowed back in on his new visa. On Aug. 23, the
CIA sent out an urgent cable, labeled IMMEDIATE, to the State
Department, Customs, INS and FBI, telling them to put the two men
on the terrorism watch list.
The FBI began an aggressive, “full field” investigation. Agents
searched all nine Marriott hotels in New York City, the place
Almihdhar had listed as his “destination” on his immigration forms in
July. They also searched hotels in Los Angeles, where the two men
originally entered the country back in 1999. But it’s unclear whether
agents scoured public records for driver’s licenses and phone
numbers or tried to track plane-ticket purchases. In preparation for
their mission, the men had gone to ground.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT
Now, amid the escalating blame wars in Washington, federal
agents are left to wonder how different things might have been if
they’d started that search nearly two years before. The FBI’s claim
that it could have unraveled the plot by watching Alhazmi and
Almihdhar, and connecting the dots between them and the other
terrorists, seems compelling.
The links would not have been difficult to make: Alhazmi met
up with Hanjour, the Flight 77 pilot, in Phoenix in late 2000; six
months later, in May 2001, the two men showed up in New Jersey
and opened shared bank accounts with two other plotters, Ahmed
Alghamdi and Majed Moqed. The next month, Alhazmi helped two
other hijackers, Salem Alhazmi (his brother) and Abdulaziz Alomari,
open their own bank accounts. Two months after that, in August
2001, the trail would have led to the plot’s ringleader, Mohamed
Atta, who had bought plane tickets for Moqed and Alomari. What’s
more, at least several of the hijackers had traveled to Las Vegas for
a meeting in summer 2001, just weeks before the attacks. “It’s like
three degrees of separation,” insists an FBI official.
But would even that have been enough? There’s no doubt that
Alhazmi and Almihdhar could have been stopped from coming into
the country if the CIA had shared its information with other agencies.
But then two other hijackers could have been sent to take their
place. And given how little the FBI understood Al Qaeda’s way of
operating—and how it managed to mishandle the key clues it did
have—it’s possible that agents could have identified all 19 hijackers
and still not figured out what they were up to. That, one former FBI
official suggests, could have led to the cruelest September 11
scenario of all: “We would have had the FBI watching them get on
the plane in Boston and calling Los Angeles,” he says. ” ‘Could you
pick them up on the other end?’ ”
With Mark Hosenball, Tamara Lipper and Eleanor Clift in
Washington, Andrew Murr and Jamie Reno in San Diego
2002 Newsweek, Inc.
Outgoing mail is certified virus free
Scanned by Norton AntiVirus
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
