U.S. ignored 9/11 lead, Germany says
advertisement
James Risen and Eric Lichtblau
New York Times
Feb. 24, 2004 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - U.S. investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers 2 1/2 years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, according to U.S. and German officials.
The information, the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers, has now become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Monday. It is considered particularly significant because it may have represented a missed opportunity for U.S. officials to penetrate the German terror cell that was at the heart of the plot. And it came roughly 16 months before the hijacker showed up at flight schools in the United States.
In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the CIA the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi and asked the Americans to track him. The name and phone number in the United Arab Emirates had been obtained by the Germans by monitoring the telephone of Mohammed Heidar Zammar, an Islamic extremist in Hamburg who was closely linked to the important plotters behind the Sept. 11 attacks, German officials said.
After the Germans passed the information on to the CIA, they never heard from the Americans about the matter until after Sept. 11, a senior German intelligence official said.
"There was no response" at the time, the official said. After receiving the tip, the CIA decided that "Marwan" was probably an associate of Osama bin Laden, but the agency never tracked him down, U.S. officials say.
The information concerning Shehhi, the man who took over the controls of United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, came months earlier than well-documented tips about other hijackers, including two others who were discovered to have attended a meeting of extremists in Malaysia in January 2000.
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks has received information concerning the 1999 Shehhi tip and is actively investigating the issue, said Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission.
U.S. intelligence officials and others involved with the matter say they are uncertain whether Shehhi's phone was ever monitored.
A U.S. official said, "The Germans did give us the name 'Marwan' and a phone number, but we were unable to come up with anything. It was an unlisted phone number in the UAE, which he was known to use."
The incident is of particular importance because Shehhi was an important member of the Qaida cell in Hamburg at the heart of the Sept. 11 plot. Close surveillance of Shehhi in 1999 might have led investigators to other plot leaders, including Mohammed Atta, who was Shehhi's roommate.
A native of the United Arab Emirates, Shehhi moved to Germany in 1996 and was almost inseparable from Atta in their time there. Both men attended the wedding of a fellow Muslim at a radical mosque in Hamburg in October 1999, an event considered an important gathering for the Sept. 11 hijacking teams just as the plotting was getting under way. U.S. and European authorities believe that Shehhi played a critical role in the Sept. 11 plot and was actively involved in its planning and logistics.
"The Hamburg cell is very important" to the Sept. 11 investigation, Zelikow said. The intelligence on Shehhi "is an issue that's obviously of importance to us, and we're investigating it," he added.
Asked whether U.S. intelligence officials gave sufficient attention to the information about Shehhi, Zelikow said, "We haven't reached any conclusions."
azcentral.com
And STILL the libs ignore it! |
