-Caveat Lector- http://www.msnbc.com/news/629406.asp Newsweek FBI Links USS Cole Attack and World Trade Center Bombing Hijacker had met with bin Laden agent connected to bombing of destroyer By Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman NEWSWEEK Sept. 24 issue � A little more than two weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI began an investigation into two of the suspected hijackers after receiving information from the CIA that the men were associated with the terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden, NEWSWEEK has learned. THE FBI PROBE was launched in late August after officials were advised that Khalid Al-Midhar�identified this week as one of the hijackers aboard the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon�had been captured on a surveillance videotape in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, meeting with one of the suspects in the Oct. 12, 2000, terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, according to law-enforcement and intelligence officials. The bombing, which killed 17 U.S. sailors, was quickly linked by U.S. officials to bin Laden�s organization. The disclosure that the FBI was actively looking for Al-Midhar and one of his associates, Salem Alhamzi�who has also been identified as one of the suspects aboard the American Airlines flight that took off from Washington�s Dulles Airport and slammed into the Pentagon-represents the first hard evidence that U.S. officials were aware of possible terrorist ties of at least some of the hijackers prior to Tuesday�s attacks. (For NEWSWEEK�s complete coverage of the investigation into the terror bombings, see the magazine�s Sept. 24 issue on newsstands Monday). The intelligence linking Al-Midhar to a Cole bombing suspect is also the latest evidence suggesting that Tuesday�s attacks may have been the work of the renegade Saudi exile bin Laden. NEWSWEEK reported last March that internal FBI documents identified one of bin Laden�s most senior �security officials� as a key conspirator in the Cole attack. President Bush today called bin Laden a �prime suspect� in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and added: �If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken.� The FBI probe was being primarily conducted out of the New York and Los Angeles field offices of the bureau and was ongoing right up to Tuesday morning, a law-enforcement official said today. But the bureau�s attempts to locate either suspect was unsuccessful, primarily because the only information the two men gave to immigration authorities about their intended destinations turned out to be �completely bogus,� the official said. According to accounts given to NEWSWEEK by U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement officials, the CIA first notified the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Aug. 21 that Al-Midhar should be placed on a terrorist �watch list� because of suspected associations with bin Laden. The prime evidence, one official said, was the secret videotape showing Al-Midhar at the meeting in Malaysia with one of the architects of the Cole bombing. The man has since been jailed in Yemen. The INS checked its databases and discovered that Al-Midhar had already entered the United States. After the CIA was informed of this, it passed the names of Al-Midhar and his associate, Alhamzi, with whom he had entered the country, along to the FBI. The FBI then began looking for the two men. When the two entered the United States on business visas earlier this year, they listed as their only addresses the �Marriott hotel� in New York. Marriott operates ten hotels in New York City, and the bureau began methodically checking guest records for each of them. But no record was found. At the same time, the bureau began checking the records of a second hotel chain in the Los Angeles area after discovering that both Al-Midhar and Alhamzi had entered the country last year as well and listed that chain as their address. Again, no records were found. Law-enforcement officials stressed that the bureau was still actively looking for the two men on Sept. 11 as news of the bombings broke. �We had only two weeks and one small piece of information that was clearly bogus about where they were supposed to be,� said an official. Your use of Yahoo! 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