More reasons we DO NOT NEED THE PATRIOT ACT....they already knew the guys......incompetence still reigns
Report: FBI Informant Knew 9/11 Hijackers
By CURT ANDERSON
The Associated Press
Monday, July 21, 2003; 7:33 PM
WASHINGTON - An FBI
informant knew two of the Sept. 11 hijackers but never suspected they were
terrorists, according to a congressional report that nonetheless concludes no
single piece of information could have prevented the attacks.
The unidentified informant was with Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi in
San Diego during the summer of 2000, although the nature of their relationship
was unclear.
Almihdhar and Alhazmi recently had been linked by U.S. intelligence officials
to possible terrorist activity, but that information apparently had not been
shared with the FBI, the report said. Nothing the two men said or did in the
presence of the informant aroused suspicion.
Almihdhar and Alhazmi were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which
crashed into the Pentagon. The informant also may have been introduced to
Hani Hanjour, who U.S. officials believe piloted that hijacked plane.
The informant's role in the months leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is
among new details that emerge from the 900-page declassified version of last
year's report by the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Portions of the report, scheduled for release Thursday, were described
Monday to The Associated Press by law enforcement officials on condition of
anonymity.
Blacked out in the report is a 28-page section that the officials say criticizes
Saudi Arabia's government and details its lack of interest in tackling Muslim
extremism.
The report finds no single piece of intelligence or information that could have
stopped the attacks, stating at one point: "The joint inquiry did not uncover a
smoking gun."
Instead, officials say the blame is spread across the federal government, from
the failure by the CIA and other intelligence agencies to share information to
the failure by the FBI to focus attention on a burgeoning terrorist threat inside
U.S. borders.
"There's a lot of shared failure and blame to go around," said former Rep. Tim
Roemer, D-Ind., who was a member of the joint intelligence panels that
conducted the inquiry.
Newsweek magazine first revealed the report's information about the
informant. According to federal enforcement officials, the informant reported
contact with Almihdhar and Alhazmi to his FBI handler in the summer of
2000. The report said he gave only their first names, and there was no reason
for the men to have caused misgivings since at that point neither was on
government watch lists of suspected terrorists.
It wasn't until after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole at port in
Yemen that the FBI learned both men had attended a January 2000 meeting
in Malaysia of major al-Qaida operatives. The CIA had known the two
attended the meeting, but apparently the information never was shared with
the FBI.
It wasn't until Aug. 23, 2001, three weeks before the attacks, that their names
were placed on lists of suspected terrorists that would have prevented them
from entering the United States or allowed their arrest and detention had they
tried to leave.
Because Almihdhar and Alhazmi's names were not on the lists or provided by
intelligence agencies before then, the FBI had no way of telling its San Diego
informant of suspicions about them. So the informant never was asked to
collect intelligence about them, the report said.
After the attacks, the informant cooperated with the FBI and passed a
polygraph test about his contacts with the hijackers. His name and location
remain secret, and the FBI refused congressional requests last fall for the
informant to testify on Capitol Hill.
Since the attacks, the government has overhauled the way suspected terrorists
are tracked, clamped down on entry and exit rules and moved to encourage
sharing of information by the CIA and FBI.
The report also details the role played in San Diego by Omar al-Bayoumi, a
student with links to officials at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Los Angeles. A
reliable FBI source, the report said, told U.S. agents that al-Bayoumi "must
have been an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power."
The U.S. government has frequently criticized the Saudi government for not
doing more to curb terrorism and, especially, to cut off terrorist groups'
financial sources. U.S. officials recently have praised Saudi cooperation in the
investigation of an attack in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, last May that killed 35
people including nine Americans and nine Saudi suicide bombers.
Al-Bayoumi, the report said, met Almihdhar and Alhazmi in Los Angeles,
directed them to a Muslim community in San Diego and even wrote a check
for their apartment deposit. An extensive investigation into al-Bayoumi after
the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in no criminal charges, and he is now living in
Saudi Arabia.
---
Associated Press writer Ken Guggenheim contributed to this report.
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