Congress Details Pre-9/11 Gov't Lapses
Thu Jul 24, 9:11 PM ET
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By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Failure to share intelligence on two future Sept. 11
hijackers destroyed perhaps the best chance to stop the attacks, says the
final report of a congressional inquiry that details a maddening government
chain of actions not taken, information not shared and help not given.
The 850-page report, released Thursday, shows
that wide-ranging parts of the nation's intelligence
and law enforcement apparatus detected threads
that were only later connected to the hijacking
plot. Tips not shared with the San Diego FBI
were key.
Taken together, the details show a pre-Sept. 11
federal government that handled terrorism
information poorly and was unable to mount
defenses against potential al-Qaida strikes inside
the United States, according to congressional
officials who put together the report.
CIA and FBI officials say they
have already addressed many of the deficiencies,
particularly in targeting al-Qaida and
communicating with one another.
President Bush , responding to
the report, said in a statement: "Our law
enforcement and intelligence agencies are
working together more closely than ever and are
using new tools to intercept, disrupt, and prevent
terrorist attacks."
The report concludes that nowhere did the
government possess the long-sought "smoking
gun" - specific information that told officials
where, when and how the attacks would come,
the report concludes.
But it had enough pieces to begin to unravel the
plot, had it put them all together.
The key clues focused on two young Saudi
hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi,
who perished as they helped crash an airliner into
the Pentagon.
The National Security Agency first learned parts of their names and
connections to al-Qaida in 1999 from communications it intercepted in the
Middle East. The CIA found them in 2000, after they were detected
attending a meeting of al-Qaida operatives in Malaysia. CIA learned in
March 2000 that al-Hazmi had gone to the United States.
But those pieces of information made a slow path around the government
and in some cases weren't connected with each other until far later. The two
men were not put on a watchlist that would have prevented their entry into
the United States until August 2001, when they were already in the country.
A year earlier in summer 2000, a longtime FBI terrorism informant in San
Diego - previously identified by law enforcement sources as their landlord,
Abdussattar Shaikh - reported extensive contacts with the pair, identifying
them to his FBI handler only by their first names. He may have also met
with another future pilot-hijacker in December 2000, Hani Hanjour, although
he denies it, the report says.
The FBI agent told congressional investigators that if the San Diego bureau
had had access to intelligence on al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, "we would have
done everything. We would have used all available investigative techniques.
We would have given them the full-court press."
As it happened, the FBI San Diego bureau didn't learn of their connection to
their informant until after the attacks, the report says. In late August 2001,
the FBI was searching for them in New York but didn't push the search
nationwide.
The report says that the informant's contacts with the hijackers, "had they
been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego FBI field office perhaps
the intelligence community's best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot."
In addition, financial crime officials in the Treasury Department (news - web
sites) said they could have found the two hijackers in August 2001 through
credit card and bank information, the report says.
Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi also received "considerable assistance" from Omar
al-Bayoumi, who is identified as having ties to al-Qaida.
Al-Bayoumi was one of 14 people linked to the hijackers that the FBI, while
conducting counterterrorism or counterintelligence investigations, had
previously gathered information on, the report says.
This appears contrary to FBI Director Robert Mueller's
June 2002 assertion that the hijackers "contacted no
known terrorist sympathizers in the United States."
Mueller, in later private testimony recounted in the
report, said he meant that the hijackers didn't
communicate with suspected terrorist sympathizers
while counterterrorism officials were monitoring them.
"I had no intent to mislead," he said.
Considerable information in the report about whether
Saudi Arabian officials helped the hijackers remains
classified. The unclassified report - the part that was
released - suggests evidence of "foreign support for
some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the
United States" but doesn't identify the sources.
Last November, news reports surfaced about an FBI
investigation into whether money from the wife of the
Saudi ambassador to the United States indirectly found
its way to two of the hijackers.
The Saudis denied any links; the ambassador, Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, issued a statement Thursday
calling any such contentions "outrageous" and false.
The report also chastises the CIA for giving little
credence to intelligence gathered in spring 2001 that
said terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was seeking
recruits to travel to the United States. Mohammed was
later identified as a mastermind of the attacks.
The report describes a general lack of attention given to
terrorism by the Pentagon, the FBI and the
Department of Justice (news - web sites). The CIA,
meanwhile, was unable to penetrate al-Qaida's
leadership circles and had problems working with the
military, which, in the CIA's view, wanted unreasonable
specificity in information before launching a strike.
An FBI budget official told the inquiry that
"counterterrorism was not a priority for Attorney
General (John) Ashcroft before Sept. 11, and the FBI
faced pressure to make cuts in counterterrorism to
satisfy his other priorities."
CIA Director George Tenet declared "war" on al-Qaida
in December 1998 but the agency was sometimes
stymied by limited resources. Nor was his call heeded
throughout the intelligence community: A senior FBI
official said he didn't know about it and the head of the
NSA thought it was meant for the CIA only.
The report was released after months of wrangling over
declassification issues.
Congressional sources connected with the investigation
said administration officials tried to remove all
references to the "President's Daily Brief," a classified
intelligence report given to the president daily. The
administration relented when shown general
descriptions of the brief on the CIA's Web site.
But the administration would not allow investigators to
review the briefs, so it is unclear, with one exception,
what information Presidents Clinton and Bush were
provided about terrorism before Sept. 11.
The exception, previously acknowledged by the Bush
administration: On Aug. 6, 2001, part of a CIA briefing
to Bush included general concerns that al-Qaida could
attempt a traditional hijacking to secure the release of
their allies from prison.
Some 3,000 people died when hijacked airliners
slammed into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a
field in Pennsylvania.
___
Associated Press writer Ken Guggenheim contributed
to this report.
On the Net:
Text of the report:
datacenter.ap.org |
