PROOF the CIA and FBI are clowns and should be held partially responsible for 911.....AND going to war based on LIES....
Clues Missed on 9/11 Plotters
Investigators, saying eight men had doctored passports, challenge FBI and CIA claims. Alleged mastermind was
given a visa despite charges.
By Greg Miller and Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind
of the Sept. 11, 2001, plot, obtained a visa to come to the United States just
weeks before the attacks despite being under a federal terrorism indictment, a
report by the federal commission investigating the attacks revealed Monday.
And as many as eight of the hijackers entered the country with doctored
passports that contained "clues to their association with Al Qaeda" that should
have been caught by immigration authorities, commission investigators said.
The newly disclosed
findings challenge
previous claims by top
CIA and FBI officials
that the hijackers'
records and paperwork
were so clean that they
could not have aroused
suspicion.
The commission also
heard testimony from a
U.S. customs agent who
blocked the entry of a
Saudi citizen
investigators now believe
may have been the intended 20th hijacker.
Authorities later learned that Mohamed Atta, the leader of the Al Qaeda cells
that executed the Sept. 11 attacks, was at an Orlando, Fla., airport that same
day — possibly waiting to meet up with the Saudi man, Mohammed
Al-Qahtani, who is now in U.S.custody.
The disclosures were included in the first set of staff reports to be issued by
the commission since it opened its inquiry last year, and came during a daylong
hearing devoted to immigration and intelligence-related failures by government
agencies.
Government witnesses described on Monday reforms that they said have shored up serious
shortcomings in border security systems, visa screenings and information-sharing among agencies
responsible for generating watch lists of suspected terrorists.
But commissioners and investigators on the panel voiced concern that certain agencies have not come
to grips with the magnitude of the problems that allowed Al Qaeda operatives to slip past security
systems and checks.
"We are not sure that these problems have been addressed," said Philip Zelikow, executive director of
the commission, referring to failures to put Al Qaeda operatives on federal watch lists. "We are not sure
they are even adequately acknowledged as a problem."
Also on Monday, President Bush identified an Al Qaeda operative caught in Iraq 12 days ago as a
senior official in the organization who had close ties to Mohammed.
Bush said that when he was captured, Hassan Ghul was in Iraq trying to facilitate attacks by insurgents
against U.S. troops. He said that in the past, Ghul "reported directly" to Mohammed, the operational
commander of Al Qaeda who was captured in Pakistan in March.
"He was a killer," Bush said of Ghul. "He was moving money and messages around South Asia and the
Middle East to other Al Qaeda leaders. He was a part of this network of haters that we're dismantling."
As part of their presentation at the commission hearing, Zelikow and other staffers unveiled significant
pieces of information. Among them was the disclosure that Mohammed had obtained a visa to visit the
United States on July 23, 2001 — about six weeks before the attacks.
The information suggests Mohammed may have been planning a last-minute trip to shepherd some
aspect of the plot, a move that would have carried enormous risks because he had been under federal
indictment in the United States since 1996 for his role in earlier terrorist plots.
Mohammed applied for the visa using a Saudi passport and alias — Abdulrahman al Ghamdi — even
though he is Pakistani-born and was not believed to have been in Saudi Arabia at the time the
application was filed, according to a portion of the staff report read by Susan Ginsburg, senior counsel
to the commission.
"He had someone else submit his application and a photo" through a third party visa application system
known as Visa Express, Ginsburg said, adding that "there is no evidence that he ever used the visa to
enter the United States."
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan last year and is being held by American authorities at an
undisclosed location.
Ginsburg cited a series of other security breakdowns that had not been previously disclosed. She said
investigators now believe eight hijackers entered the country on passports that had been doctored "in
ways that have been associated with Al Qaeda."
She did not elaborate on those methods, citing security concerns. But she said investigators have been
able to examine four of the hijackers' passports that were either recovered from crash sites or found in
luggage, and that digital copies of other passports were recovered in "post-9/11 operations." She
challenged CIA Director George J. Tenet's description of 17 of the 19 hijackers as arriving in the
country "clean" of activities or paperwork that would have aroused suspicion, and FBI Director Robert
S. Mueller III's claim that "each of the hijackers … came easily and lawfully from abroad."
"We believe the information we have provided today gives the commission the opportunity to
reevaluate those statements," Ginsburg said.
But at least one commissioner cautioned that members of the panel were only presented with the staff
statements over the weekend, and that they do not necessarily agree with their conclusions.
Some of the most startling details to surface Monday centered on the case of Al-Qahtani, the Saudi
who was turned away by customs officials upon his arrival at an Orlando, Fla., airport Aug. 4, 2001.
The man was screened by Jose Melendez-Perez, an inspector with Customs and Border Protection,
part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Testifying before the commission, Melendez-Perez said he was immediately suspicious of Al-Qahtani,
who arrived with no return ticket, no hotel reservations, spoke little English, behaved menacingly and
offered conflicting information on the purpose of his travel.
"The bottom line: He gave me the chills," Melendez-Perez said, describing Al-Qahtani as well groomed,
"combative" and in "impeccable shape."
At one point, the Saudi said there was someone waiting for him upstairs in the airport, Melendez-Perez
recalled. But when asked that person's name, "he changed his story and said no one was meeting him."
Although authorities didn't know it until after Sept. 11, surveillance cameras caught Atta at the airport
that day. And records showed him making a cellphone call to a number linked to the 9/11 plot.
Citing that Atta connection and other information the panel could not disclose, Commissioner Richard
Ben-Veniste said: "It is extremely possible and perhaps probable that [Al-Qahtani] was to be the 20th
hijacker."
The Saudi withdrew his application for entry. As Al-Qahtani boarded a return flight to Saudi Arabia, he
stopped and said, "I'll be back," Melendez-Perez testified.
Al-Qahtani, 26, apparently made his way from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, where he was caught by
American forces and sent to a U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Melendez-Perez said that leading up to Sept. 11, customs officials were discouraged by their superiors
from hassling Saudi travelers, seen as big spenders who made frequent visits to theme parks in the
Orlando area. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
The committee staff also disclosed the names of two other suspected co-conspirators in the Sept. 11
plot who had tried and failed to get into the United States — including a man identified as the nephew
of Mohammed.
That man, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, was "heavily involved in financial and logistical aspects of the 9/11 plot,"
according to a second staff statement, written by Ginsburg.
The panel's senior counsel said Aziz Ali tried to get a U.S. visa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, about
two weeks before the attacks, saying he intended to enter the U.S. on Sept. 4, 2001, for one week. As
a Pakistani visa applicant in a third country, Ginsburg said, he probably received greater scrutiny from
U.S. officials and was denied a visa because it was deemed possible that he intended to disappear into
the country.
Another man, a Saudi national, was identified Monday as a potential hijacker, the commission staff
statement said.
Saeed al Gamdi, also known as Jihad al Gamdi, "apparently intended to participate in the 9/11
attacks," said Ginsburg's report, noting that Gamdi was not the Saeed Alghamdi who actually became a
hijacker.
The Gamdi who failed to get permission to enter the U.S. applied for a tourist visa in Jeddah, Saudi
Arabia, on Nov. 12, 2000, the same date as 9/11 hijacker Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi, the
statement said. Haznawi was approved, but Gamdi was denied after an interview with a consular
officer who believed he intended to stay here illegally. |
