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Unanswered Questions : Thinking for ourselves.
©
Copyright 2003.
All rights reserved.
Mark G.
Levey
[See, CRIMES OF 9/11
(Pt. 1) ;
CRIMES OF 9/11
(Pt. 2) ;
CRIMES OF 9/11
(pt. 3) ]
MORE QUESTIONS FOR A GRAND JURY:
· Were the Flight 77
Hijackers Actually Under Saudi Intelligence “Control”?
· Did the FBI Destroy the
Record of Al-Qaeda Wiretaps Obtained in March 2000?
· Did Federal Officers
Provide Material Support to Terrorists Without Legal Authorization?
· Did the White House and
Top Intelligence Officials Lie to Congress?
*****************
In early summer 2001, US officials received numerous warnings from domestic
and foreign intelligence agencies that al-Qaeda terrorists planned
“spectacular” air attacks on prominent landmarks inside the
But, nobody bothered to let the American
people know about any of this.
Then, as quietly as it had been raised, the federal
terrorism alert was stood-down after the summit concluded on the 22nd, and Bush
safely returned to the
Ranking national security officials were
already acutely aware that a major al-Qaeda operation was in the works. On July
5, a high-level meeting to discuss the terrorist threat had been convened in
the White House situation room. The conference was attended by the heads of all
major national security agencies. [Time,
8/4/02 ] Richard Clarke, NSC counterterrorism chief, directed every
counter-terrorist office to a high level alert.
By early August, however, all of these
emergency measures are no longer in effect. [CNN, 3/02 , Washington Post, 5/17/02 ] A briefing prepared for senior
"Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last
five months, we believe that [bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist
attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will
be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or
interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or
no warning." [Prepared Statement of Eleanor Hill, Staff Director, Joint
House-Senate inquiry,
As the clock counted down to 9/11,
intelligence information given to senior officials showed that
On August 6, George W. Bush was briefed by his
national security advisor, Condaleeza Rice at the President’s
"[M]embers of al-Qaeda, including some
Meanwhile, that August, FBI investigators in
New York and Minneapolis were trying desperately to gather sufficient evidence
to obtain FISA warrants to track down four al-Qaeda members known to be at
large in the country and information for a warrant to open the computer files
of a fifth suspect, Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been arrested at a Norman
Oklahoma flight school. FBI requests that summer to the CIA for information
contained in the Agency’s files were repeatedly stonewalled.
On
the CIA knew about these two al-Qaeda members.
In refusing to turn over information the previous month, a CIA officer told FBI
investigators attached to the FBI’s New York National Security office he would
not turn over “operational” information. In a now famous e-mail message, one of
the New York Bureau investigators remarked about the seeming meltdown in
For reasons that have not yet been
satisfactorily explained, the federal terrorism alert was relaxed after Bush
received his briefing. Five weeks later, 19 hijackers armed with box cutters
were able to board four commercial airliners, flying them into the
Three thousand people died in what was
possibly, at high levels of the US Government, the most widely anticipated mass
murder in American history.
Why did the President and his senior national
security officials behave as they did in the face of these warnings? Was US
intelligence simply deceived into believing that any al-Qaeda attack would
occur abroad, as has been claimed, or was there an unstated reason officials
took the enormous risks they did? What were top
Administration officials thinking?
***************
"They Had It Covered." - Anonymous Aide to
NSC Counterterrorism Chief, Richard Clarke
What could have been the line of reasoning
behind the terrorism alert stand-down in the weeks before 9/11? The final
report of the Congressional Joint Inquiry, released in September 2003, casts
some new light on these key questions. [See, Joint Inquiry into Intelligence
Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of
http://www.governmentguide.com/ams/clickThruRedirect.adp?55076483,16920155,
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.html
The 27-page gap in the record -- a section on
foreign intelligence matters that remains classified at the insistence of the
Bush Administration -- is most notable, along with numerous shorter sections in
the report censored by the White House. Almost immediately, leaks revealed that
the main subject of the censor was the role of
A close reading of the final Joint Inquiry
report, along with other authoritative sources reveals that vulnerabilities to
catastrophic terrorist attack were clearly understood by top national security
advisors at that time. Yet, decision-makers thought that these risks were manageable.
Congressional findings show that much of the
problem with
The Joint Inquiry found that for 18 months
leading up to the attacks, the CIA withheld specific information from the FBI
and military intelligence that pinpointed the identities of the principal 9/11
conspirators. [9/11 Report, Sec. 1, p. 12, Finding 5b]. From January 2000 until
This withholding of evidence left the
emphasis on counterterrorism (CT). While the
rest of the Agency shrank during the decade following the end of the Cold War,
the budget and staff devoted to CT doubled and then redoubled. In 1998,George
Tenet declared “The Plan” -- the war plan to kill Bin Laden [see, generally,
9/11 Report, Sec. 1, pp. 40-41].
The expansion and consolidation of CT into the
hands of the CIA was hardly proactive, and it was not based on any record of
singular success in preventing terrorist attacks abroad, which is the Agency’s
jurisdiction. The Plan followed a string of deadly terrorist operations against
American targets, coming on the heels of the 1998
An integral part of Tenet’s Plan, and one of
its greatest weaknesses as noted in the Congressional findings, was the CIA’s reliance
on foreign intelligence agencies for much of its coverage of terrorist
organizations. [See, Part 1, Finding 11, pp. 90-95 ]
The Saudis and Pakistanis had long before
proven unreliable partners in the battle against terrorism. Even the Israeli
Mossad seems to have been late and surprisingly ineffectual in its warnings and
assistance in coverage of the 9/11 hijackers. It is reported that barely three
weeks before the attacks, Mossad informed the
Within days after the attacks, Fox News
carried a four-part series of reports that Israeli intelligence operatives had
been shadowing some of the 9/11 hijackers inside the
“The Mossad also had its sights on Atta's accomplice Khalid
al-Midhar, with whom the CIA was also familiar, but allowed to run free. The
Mossad apparently warned their American counterparts several times about the
terrorists, especially about al-Midhar. The American government later admitted
that they had received such warnings prior to September 11. But at most that
there were attacks planned against American installations outside the
Furthermore, the Israelis may have taken the
only active measures to try to physically prevent the hijackings on 9/11. There
have been credible reports that a "former" Israeli intelligence
officer was killed by the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 that Mohamed
Atta piloted into the
The Congressional report reveals little about
CIA activities from August 23 until September 11 that might have contributed to
the FBI’s belated manhunt or prevented the hijackings. We do know that the FBI
investigation was effectively paralyzed, having run into “The Wall”, very
serious operational problems later portrayed as “misunderstandings” about
warrant requirements. The President’s inner circle seems to have been operating
under certain misassumptions of its own about al-Qaeda, and this may have
contributed to decisions to relax terrorism alert status and not to issue a
public warning:
· the Bin Laden
organization had been penetrated by double-agents, an and these, it was
thought, were controlled by intelligence officers working for the CIA and
intelligence agencies of several “friendly” countries;
· In addition, these
multiple intelligence agencies were watching each othother, and it was
believed, rivalries, informants and US surveillance of communications would
reveal the attack plans to the CIA before the al-Qaeda Operation was completed.
Thus, the Bush White House did nothing
publicly in response to the crisis, even in the last days as the FBI was unable
to turn up the known suspects. No doubt, ranking officials when they are
compelled to talk about it, will say in their own defense that they had been
told al-Qaeda network’s global finances and operations were so throroughly
“mapped out” that
*****************
More than two years after the attack, important details continue to emerge that fill in the
gaps in the picture of the bungled counterterrorism operation that led to the
death of thousands that day in September 2001. The Associated Press revealed on
“One of the FBI's key operatives, who had a falling out with the
bureau, provided an account of the operation at a friend's closed immigration
court proceeding. AP obtained and reviewed the court documents.
“Arizona businessman Harry Ellen testified
he permitted the FBI to bug his home, car and office, allowed his Muslim
foundation's activities in the Gaza Strip to be monitored by agents, arranged a
peace meeting between major Palestinian activists and gained personal access to
Yasser Arafat during more than four years of cooperation with the FBI.
“Ellen's FBI handler in the late 1990s was
Kenneth Williams, an agent who later became famous for writing a pre-Sept. 11
memo to FBI headquarters warning there were Arab pilots training at
It is significant that the anti-Hamas
operation run by Williams apparently did not work as planned, and top
“Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, said in an
interview that the White House wasn't informed of the FBI activities. "We
were not aware of any such operation," Berger said.
“Clinton's anti-terror czar, Richard
Clarke, said he too was unaware of the operation. "I never heard of it,
but it's creative," he said.
“
While top officials interviewed deny
knowledge, it is highly unlikely that the
“If an FBI source was involved in illegal funding or in
terrorist training, the agent responsible for the source had to obtain approval
from FBI Headquarters and the Department of Justice to allow the source to
engage in illegal activity. According to FBI personnel, this was a difficult
process that sometimes took as long as six months.” [9/11 Report, Section
1, Finding 11, page 94]
Williams reportedly hoped that Mr. Ellen would
lead the FBI to major financiers of the armed Palestinian Intifada, but Ellen
is said to have refused. Had the operation succeeded in the way Williams hoped,
it would surely have scuttled the Wye Accords signed in October 1998. That
Administration, and some within the next, were deeply concerned that the FBI
was being used by elements within Israeli intelligence hostile to an
accommodation with Yassar Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. That operation
against Hamas supporters, and another being run out of the Bureau’s
The unpleasant political overtones and fallout
from this episode would help to explain why Williams’ later
************************
The FBI’s Phoenix Hamas operation also points to the methods that FBI agents employed in
dealing with their own informants who had multiple encounters with the
September 11 hijackers in the months leading up to the attacks, and may
indicate why there is no record the Bureau sought FISA warrants to surveil
al-Hazmi and the other al-Qaeda cell members.
“Ellen testified that Williams told him he hoped the transfer
would lead to more money exchanges through terror groups but Ellen refused to
earmark money for terrorism. He testified he later learned another FBI
operative had offered Hamas and Palestinian figures larger amounts for
terrorist attacks.
“The court testimony shows Ellen allowed
his home, office and car in
“The FBI said it commonly uses such
recordings. ‘ Consensual monitoring does not require a warrant. In cases
where the FBI conducts consensual monitoring, the one party is aware he is
being recorded,’ it said.” [
emphasis added]
A particularly important point here about the
Consensual monitoring eliminates what some FBI
investigators perceived as the sometimes cumbersome process of applying through
Headquarters for warrants from the
Unfortunately, not having a warrant can also
greatly complicate matters, as it led to more joint sting operations in
conjunction with foreign intelligence agencies, and raised the risks of
catastrophic operational failure.
Investigators know, of course, about the
potential problems with the consensual monitoring approach. In counterterrorism
cases, there is always the danger that informants prove to be unreliable or,
worse, double agents of hostile groups. Another problem is achieving adequate
coverage of suspected terrorists and their communications through consensual
monitoring, alone. The danger in this method is that unless the suspect is in
the physical presence of a willing informant 24-hours a day, the terrorist can
easily evade surveillance, and contact is lost. One can backstop this kind of
surveillance by coordination with a cooperative foreign intelligence agency,
but this is fraught with its own perils, as the FBI learned in the Phoenix
Operation.
It appears that some variation of an
unwarranted surveillance operation may have been employed late in the summer of
2001 with the hijackers. If two of these problems occurred together, it might
have been days or weeks before the CIA and/or FBI realized that they had lost
control over the surveillance operation. If the relationship with the
“friendly” foreign intelligence partner is ambivalent, and everyone isn’t
really taking with each other, then safeguards are likely to be inadequate.
That would explain the frantic search, constrained by a lack of warrants and
electronic coverage, that occurred in the last few weeks before 9/11. A full,
warranted surveillance operation should have, instead, been in place for safety
reasons.
When dealing with intending suicide terrorists
bent on “spectacular” attacks with mass casualties, warrants are essential. For
federal agents to have acted without warrants in monitoring the 9/11 hijackers
was manifestly reckless in the extreme.
For the Bush Administration to have allowed
this operation to continue as long as it did was criminally negligent.
The Congressional Inquiry report found that
the 9/11 hijackers had many recorded contacts with FBI sources and informants
found to be linked to Saudi intelligence. The report identified a total of 14
persons who had at some point been the subject of FBI scrutiny, “four of whom
were the focus of active FBI investigations, while the hijackers were in the
The most significant of these contacts, Omar
al-Bayoumi, is described in the 9/11 Report in terms that unmistakably identify
him as a probable Saudi intelligence agent who had been known to FBI
counterterrorism since September 1998 [See, Ibid., pp 172-175]. According to
the narrative, shortly after al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi arrived in
Al-Bayoumi worked for the Saudi civil aviation
authority. According to the 9/11 report, “Despite the fact that he was a
student, al-Bayoumi had access to seemingly unlimited funding from
The report next discusses a third individual
described as an “Imam” [cleric] who in 2001 housed al-Hazmi and newly-arrived
Hani Hanjour [the presumed pilot of AA Flight 77, brought in after al-Mihdhar’s
flying skills proved inadequate]. Al-Mihdhar left the
Indeed, the hijackers of Flight 77 appear to
have had a series of handlers who display traits as both likely Saudi agents
and a history as FBI informants. These Saudis may have indeed been providing
coverage in a “consensual monitoring” operation. There would not be a record of
FISA warrants, in such an operation, particularly if
However, the FBI and/or CIA would still have
been required to obtain high-level authorization to provide any sort of
material assistance to intending terrorists, even if they were handled
indirectly through a foreign intelligence service “cutout.” There is no record
of such authorization turned over to the Inquiry.
Any White House official who was aware of an
unauthorized monitoring operation of the 9/11 hijackers inside the
If information about such an operation was
later withheld from Congress, that was yet another set of felonies.
The Administration has vigorously resisted
Congressional efforts to subpoena one of the FBI’s Saudi informants. In its
findings, the Congressional Inquiry complained, (presumably referring to
al-Bayoumi):
“[T]he Administration has to date objected to the Inquiry’s
efforts to interview the informant . . . the Administration also would not
agree to allow the FBI to serve a Committee subpoena and deposition notice on
the informant . . . [who] declined to respond to those interrogatories and has
indicated that, if subpoenaed, the informant would request a grant of
immunity.” [Sec. 1, p 19]
*********************
Years before most of the 9/11 “martyrdom”
operatives started entering the
In 1994, an al-Qaeda communications system
started operation in
In 1999, calls from an al-Qaeda logistics
center in
With the cooperation of a half-dozen allied
intelligence agencies, the CIA then photographed and followed the participants,
two of whom, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who entered the US on
January 15 2000. Almost immediately, the pair were taken under the wing of
persons tied to Saudi intelligence, which provided money, introductions and
other assistance as they trained for their mission. The hijackers behaved as if
they had immunity – taking unauthorized flight training, overstaying visas,
working as pilot trainees, and at times boasting to strangers and acquaintances
about their lethal mission – acting as indeed they knew they were being
protected.
This ongoing, multi-agency, multinational
surveillance operation explains why the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC)
commanders seem to have reacted almost indifferently – and were sometimes
overtly obstructive -- when FBI field offices, acting on their own leads,
sought CIA assistance to investigate al-Qaeda terrorists detected inside the
The lead hijackers of AA Flight 77 that
smashed into the Pentagon were observed by the CIA as they traveled to and from
the Kuala Lumpur planning summit where the 9/11 attacks were discussed. Flight
77 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar reentered the
CIA headquarters says it first learned on
The FBI has maintained that it could not
obtain warrants because of legal difficulties created by the so-called Wall,
but that excuse does not stand up under scrutiny. Even in the face of
accusations of extreme incompetence within the Bureau, FBI brass stoically
continued to maintain that confusion and bad decisions by middle managers
within the Bureau prevented it from effectively disrupting al-Qaeda’s attack
plans before 9/11.
Spokesmen for both the FBI and CIA also
repeatedly blamed the Wall -- coda for shifting blame to the Foreign
Intelligence court and its legal strictures that both agencies hated -- for
what they have claimed was a near total communications breakdown within the
intelligence community during 2001.
To underscore that point about incompetence
among some of its middle managers who dealt with FISA matters, the FBI
dutifully leaked documents that purported to show unlawful domestic
surveillance of al-Qaeda had stemmed from a series of mistakes and technical
glitches. For example, an
“FBI agents illegally videotaped suspects, interceptede-mails without
court permission and recorded the wrong phoneconversations during sensitive
terrorism and espionage investigations,according to an internal memorandum
detailing serious lapses inside theFBI more than a year before the Sept. 11
attacks.
“The blunders - roughly 15 over the first
three months of 2000 - werenever made public but garnered the attention of the
"highest levels ofmanagement" inside FBI, said the memo written by
senior bureau lawyersand obtained by The Associated Press.”
The FBI even claimed it destroyed surveillance
data it intercepted in early 2000 from al-Qaeda suspects inside the
According to an FBI memo, dated
“FBI spokesman John Collingwood said yesterday that the case was
a rare mistake that resulted from technical problems encountered by an Internet
service provider, not by the FBI. . .
“The memo goes on to say that "the FBI
technical person was apparently so upset that he destroyed all the E-Mail take,
including the take" from the target. Collingwood, the FBI spokesman, said
that the memo is incorrect and that the e-mails gathered in the operation were
kept and remain under seal in the court that administers secret wiretaps.
“The memo makes clear that the Justice
Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), which oversees
FISA warrants, was enraged by the blunders in the case, in part because the
Justice Department office was allegedly not told that Carnivore was considered
experimental at the time.”
While Eggan’s account differs from the memo in
an important detail, both point the finger directly at Marion “Spike” Bowman,
then the FBI’s associate general counsel for national security, who headed the
FBI headquarters unit tracking bin Laden. Curiously, the publicly released copy
of the Carnivore memo redacts all names except Bowman’s, who became the focus
of Congressional criticism of the FBI for its alleged mishandling of al-Qaeda
surveillance operations. He also took most of the heat after Colleen Rowley
complained about the watering down of her FISA warrant application to open Zacarias
Moussaiou’s computer. The Post account continues in this same vein, identifying
Bowman’s office as having spiked the so-called “Phoenix Memo”:
“The probe involved the FBI team that investigates suspected operatives
of the al Qaeda network. It is known as the Usama bin Laden, or UBL, unit for
the agency's spelling of the al Qaeda leader's name. The same unit has come
under congressional scrutiny in recent weeks over its role in shelving a July
2001 memo from
“The memo makes clear that the Justice
Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), which oversees
FISA warrants, was enraged by the blunders in the case, in part because the
Justice Department office was allegedly not told that Carnivore was considered
experimental at the time.
“The memo also refers to an electronic
communication outlining other "FISA mistakes" and alleges "a
pattern of occurrences which indicate to OIPR an inability on the part of the
FBI to manage its FISAs."
The Congressional 9/11 report found that Mr.
Bowman’s office was the nexus of a number of critical errors, and that as a
result FBI Headquarters was operating in the dark about al-Qaeda operations.
The compartmentalized nature of CT operations indeed meant that various FBI
offices lacked coordination:
“Thus, during the summer of 2001 – a time when the Intelligence
Community was on the highest state of alert, disparate parts of the FBI had
information about Zacarias Moussaoui – as suspected suicide hijacker, a Pheonix
field office agent’s suspicions about radical fundamentalists engaging in
flight training, and the entry into the United States of Nawaf al-Hazmi and
Khalid al-Mihdhar, who would become two of the September 11 hijackers. The FBI
field office agents in Minneapolis who were investigating Moussaoui knew
nothing about the Phoenix communication or al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar had entered
the United States knew nothing about the other events of the summer. And,
finally, the Chief of the RFU at FBI Headquarters, which has handled both the
Moussaoui investigation and the Phoenix communication, acknowledged in
testimony to the Joint Inquiry on September 24, 2001, that no one at FBI
Headquarters connected those events.” [9/11 Report, Sec. 1, Finding 5d, pg. 25]
*****************
The Congressional Inquiry got the wrong
man. The Inquiry was right in pointing
out the FBI RFU did not “connect the dots” about the al-Qaeda operation. But,
that wasn’t Spike Bowman’s job – instead, by design and policy, the functional
role of coordinating CT intelligence, analysis and operations shifted during
the 1990s to the CIA, where it is vested in the Director’s Counter-Terrorism
Center, located at CIA headquarters in Langley. The true “intelligence failure”
was, in fact, the repeated and willful refusal of CTC management to handover
information to the FBI.
Indeed, we know that in mid-August agents at
the Minneapolis FBI office requested information but CTC failed to turn over
information in its files about the Kuala Lumpur meeting that would have enabled
an application for a FISA warrant to investigate Moussaoui.
Similarly, CTC had in July also refused the
New York FBI National Security office’s emphatic demands for information about
al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar’s travels and connections to other participants at the
al-Qaeda planning summit, who included Atta’s roommate and Moussaoui’s money
man in Hamburg, Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Even at that late date in summer 2001, the
FBI says it could have rounded up most of the hijackers, if the Bureau had then
been able to obtain warrants to conduct a full national security field
investigation.
Yet, there was little or no attention paid
either by Congress or the major media to this apparent obstruction of FBI
investigators by the CIA. These problems were almost always presented to the
public as internal FBI screwups.
The biggest hole in the CIA's story indeed
seems to have gotten the least public scrutiny. The Joint Committee appeared to
accept at face value, and without much question, CTC Chief Cofer Black’s
explanation that in March 2000, CIA personnel were distracted and overlooked
cables informing headquarters about US al-Hazmi's entry on January 15.
Black testified, “[A]s I showed the [CTC
personnel] the cable from March 5 – just the look on their face told me
everything I needed to know. They just hadn’t seen it. It passed them by.”
[9/11 report, Ibid., Part 1, p. 51] Rumblings that some Inquiry staffers
thought CTC Chief was prone to "dissemble" got little play in the
press, except that George Tenet reacted sharply to that report, which likely
chilled any follow-up.
Black also claimed that a second cable,
received the following day, from another CIA overseas post expressing interest
in the report that al-Hazmi had arrived, was similarly disregarded without even
being read at CTC. [Id.] A review of the record shows some serious logical and
evidentiary problems with that account:
· First, the information
gained from the Kuala Lumpur summit, in fact, was deemed so important that DCI
Tenet received several briefings in January in which al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar
were discussed. [9/11 Report, Part 1. p. 12 ] Furthermore, FBI Director Louis
Freeh was also briefed about the summit. [Ibid., p. 13]
[CIA claims it belatedly learned one or (by
other accounts) both arrived in the US. The 9/11 report concludes, “In sum,
prior to September 11, the Intelligence Community’s analytic components failed
to understand the collective significance of the information in their
possession.” (9/11 Report, Sec. 1, p. 69) This is misleading, and there are
certain inconsistencies that cast serious doubt on the CIA’s claim that CTC
employees didn’t realize the significance what it knew about the pair.]
· Second, by late 1999 the
CTC already knew a great deal about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, including the
former’s previous involvement in a support role in the East African embassy
bombings. “A CIA officer told the Joint Inquiry that, as the Intelligence
Community reviewed information from the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, ‘a
kind of tuning fork . . . buzzed when two individuals reportedly planning a
trip to Kuala Lumpur were linked indirectly to what appeared to be a support
element . . . involved with the Africa bombings.” [9/11 Report, Part 2, p. 143]
Early that year, when al-Hazmi was in Saudi Arabia, US intelligence intercepted
a communication in which he “disclosed information about the East Africa
embassy bombings.” [Ibid., p. 131]
· Third, at the time the
CIA was tracking the pair as they prepared to travel to the Kuala Lumpur
summit, CTC analysts knew enough about al- Hazmi’s family that they were able
to deduce that his brother, Salim, would also be in attendance. This thought to
be so significant the“observation was reported to other Intelligence Community
agencies.” [Id., p. 144]
· Fourth, al-Mihdhar’s
father-in-law, Ahmad Mohammad ali al-Hada, ran a major al-Qaeda communications
center, the “Yemen Switchboard” used to relay messages from bin Laden’s
satellite phone that western intelligence had been monitoring since 1995, if
not earlier. Prior to the intercept that lead the CIA to the Kuala Lumpur
summit, surveillance of the line had provided a rich “take” for US and British
intelligence, including evidence used to convict the 1998 East Africa embassy
bombers, and information linking bin Laden with operatives in the UK. [See
sidebar text, below]
In early 2002, Yemen attempted to capture
members of a prominent al-Qaeda family. When soldiers cornered Sameer al-Hada,
he reportedly killed himself with a hand grenade. That grisly incident received
some attention in the international media. However, a press release issued by
the The Yemen Embassy in Washington revealed substantial information about the
electronic surveillance that revealed Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi to US
intelligence.
That report contains significant details that
has not been publicly released by US official and major media outlet is
reprinted below:
****INSERT****
Yemen Cracks Major Terrorist Super Cell
[13-FEB-02]
SAMEER al-Hada, a Yemeni student and suspected
al-Qaida courier, blew himself up with a hand grenade Wednesday outside the
Yemeni capital, Sana’a, as security forces tried to pull him in for
questioning. U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity,
said that intercepts of al-Qaida communications indicate that the al-Hada
family phone was used to relay messages both to the embassy bombers and the
Sept. 11 hijackers. The information tends to corroborate the belief that the
al-Hada clan served as a “super cell” for al-Qaida in Yemen, providing key
communications support and personnel for its jihad against the United States.
U.S. officials say they can link the clan to
the Sept. 11 attacks, the August 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania and the October 2000 bombing attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Aden
harbor.
The United States previously has accused the
al-Qaida network, led by exiled Saudi Osama bin Laden, of all three attacks.
The phone in question is listed to Ahmad Mohammad ali al-Hada, the patriarch of
the clan and a man described by U.S. officials as “a prominent al-Qaida member
who is believed to have been involved in the Cole bombing.”
He remains at large and is being sought by
U.S. and Yemeni authorities. These officials added that they believe other
family members are intimately involved in the al-Qaida war against America.
Another of Ahmed’s sons is thought to have died in Afghanistan during training
in 1992.
A son-in-law is named as one of the Sept.
11 hijackers: Khalid al-Midhar, allegedly the ringleader of the al-Qaida cell
that flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. Another son-in-law, Mustafa Abdulkader, is among the 16
men listed as wanted by the FBI in its terror alert earlier this week. He, too,
remains at large.
The central position the al-Hada family
allegedly occupied in al-Qaida’s Yemen network came to light Wednesday after
25-year-old Sameer al-Hada, 25, killed himself while being chased by Yemeni
security forces.
He had been stopped for questioning as he was
trying to flee from Yemen. The Yemen Observer, a local newspaper, reported
Thursday that a gunfight ensued before Sameer was surrounded by police. He then
threatened police with a hand grenade. The grenade exploded in his hand, killing
him instantly. No police were injured in the incident, which happened in a
suburb of the Yemeni capital, San’a, during the early evening. U.S. officials
speculate that Sameer likely committed suicide to avoid revealing more about
his family’s role in al-Qaida communications.
For several years, U.S. investigators and
prosecutors involved with the investigation of the East Africa embassy bombings
have referred to a “Yemen switchboard” for al-Qaida, something U.S. officials
now confirm was actually the phone of Ahmad al-Hada. Transcripts from the New
York trial of four men eventually convicted of bombing the two U.S. embassies
in Africa showed that al-Hada’s number — 011-967-1-200-578 — figured
prominently in al-Qaida operations.
The transcript indicates that bin Laden, or at
least someone using his satellite phone, as well as bin Laden deputy Mohammed
Atef and several of the embassy bombers, would call Ahmad al-Hada’s number in
Yemen to relay information.
Among the numerous references in the trial
record regarding the use of Yemen as a terrorist switchboard are: · In the days
before the August 1998 embassy bombings,
12 phone calls were placed by the bombing
co-conspirators — including
two calls using bin Laden’s own satellite
phone — to a phone number in Yemen.
Two of the calls, the prosecutors say, were
placed by one of the bombers in the minutes before he and others left a safe
house in suburban Nairobi to blow up the embassy in the Kenyan capital. The
information was available in late 1998.
Other entries in the trial record show that
an August 1998 Scotland Yard search of a London apartment used by bin Laden
lieutenant Khalid al-Fawwaz turned up mobile phone records from Kenya showing
numerous calls from al-Fawwaz to the same numbers in Yemen during 1995-96.
The embassy bombing trial led to the
convictions of four men on murder charges in the two bombings on Aug. 7, 1998,
which killed 224 people — 213 in Nairobi, including 12 Americans, and 11 people
in Tanzania. More than 4,500 people suffered injuries in the attacks.
[emphases added]
**** END INSERT ****
· Fifth, at the time that
the March 5 and 6 cables arrived at CIA headquarters, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar
were classified by CTC as “terrorist operatives”. A CIA cable stated, “Nawaf’s
travel may be in support of a terrorist mission.” [Id., p. 144] Cables
concerning persons so classified, particularly those apparently well known to
analysts and operations personnel, would be red-flagged. It seems implausible
the cables would have been shuffled aside, as Mr. Black claims.
The concentration of electronic surveillance
on al-Qaeda is a reason to disbelieve assertions that CIA was in the dark for
at least a year about the presence in the US of these 9/11 hijackers.
Throughout the entire period leading up to 9/11, al-Qaeda’s communications
network -- both abroad and within the US – was monitored through redundant
surveillance.
********************
For at least seven years prior to 9/11, US
intelligence tapped al-Qaeda communications all over the world and inside the
US. But, according to the official account, nobody within the US intelligence
community “connected the dots” during the 18 months that terrorists were indeed
roaming around the U.S. It is claimed that neither the CIA nor the FBI carried
out any action to monitor or locate the 9/11 hijackers until the last week in
August, 2001.
By an odd coincidence, on March 11, 2000, six
days after the CIA claims it first learned that al-Hazmi had entered the US, the
FBI began to wiretap alleged al-Qaeda communications going through a
telecommunications site located in the Denver area.
The Washington Post and an October 2002
Congressional finding reported that wiretap was a failure. The operation is
described in tragic-comedy terms as yet another in a long line of bungled
al-Qaeda surveillance by the FBI. But, those reports do not pass the sniff
test.
A Scripps-Howard report dated November 12,
2001 fills in more of the details and gives the historical context that was
missing in other reports about the target of the FBI’S Denver intercept. Some
of MCI’s older international 1-800 lines originate in nearby Colorado Springs,
home of the NORAD command center. MCI's fiber optic network, itself, piggybacks
on lines laid by DOD. That Scripps-Howard wire story, written by Lou Kilzer,
[reproduced, below] indicates that al-Qaeda was running a toll-free 800 service
out of Denver. That line was reportedly set up in 1994 by Khallid al-Fawazz,
bin Laden’s associate in London as a "secure" line to al-Qaeda
operatives in the UK and Saudi Arabia. Likely, it was that line (or a successor
web-based system that tapped into MCI’s backbone) the reportedly aborted
Carnivore operation monitored. The Advise and Reformation Council (ARC), a British-based
Islamic group, was run by Khalid al Fawwaz, who also provided UBL with the
"secure" satellite phones that the NSA and its British partner bugged
for years.
Fawwaz appears to have had a singular role in
facilitating the surveillance of bin Laden’s operatives. It was Fawwaz who
helped to equip al-Qaeda with much of its communications and computers. Prior
to the East Africa embassy bombings, al Fawwaz was in frequent communication
with the "logistics center" in Yemen run by Al-Mihdhar's father-in-law.
When the CIA followed al-Midhar and al-Hazmi to the January 2000 Kuala Lumpur
summit, it was on the basis of a tap US intelligence had placed on the phone of
Al-Hazmi’s father-in-law, a system al Fawwaz may also have provided.
Like many other al-Qaeda figures, Fawwaz’s
role in the murky underworld of Saudi opposition politics is not entirely
clear. In the early 1990s, Fawwaz emerged as one of the highest profile Bin
Laden supporters in the west. He set up a media information office in London
and headed the "Advice and Reform Committee." [sometimes referred to
as “Advice and Reformation Committee”, or “ARC”] The London office acted as a
publicist for bin Laden while it reportedly provide cover in support of
al-Qaeda’s militant activities. [See, Usama
Bin Laden's al-Qaida: Profile of a Terrorist
Network
, by Yonah Alexander and Michael S. Swetnam. NY: Transnational Publishers,
2001] Throughout the 1990s, ARC was the central hub in the UK for recruitment,
dispersement of funds, and the procurement of equipment for al Qaeda
operations. [ See, Stephen Engelberg, "One Man and a Global Web of
Violence," New York Times, January 14, 2001, pp. 1 and 12-13; and United
States v. Usama bin Laden et al., S (7) 98 Cr. 1023
(LBS)
, pp. 4 and 11-12.]
Western surveillance of ARC, along with the
bugging of bin-Laden’s satphones, was revealed during US Attorney for the
Eastern District of New York’s prosecution of al-Qaeda operatives for the 1998
East Africa embassy bombings. Fawwaz’s London office also served as a
communications relay center that collected reports from various al-Qaeda cells,
including the Kenyan cell, forwarding them to bin Laden. Fawwaz was accused of
establishing business fronts in Kenya, particularly Asma Limited, used by the
bombers. [United States v. Usama bin Laden et al., S (7) 98 Cr. 1023 (LBS), pp.
8 and 18; and Phil Hirschkorn and Deborah Feyerick, "Embassy Bombings
Trial Witness says Bin Laden Wanted to Buy Uranium," CNN, February 7,
2001. ] He was arrested by British authorities on September 28, 1998 in London
and successfully fought extradition to the United States where he faced capital
murder, terrorism and conspiracy charges. Indeed, the UK provided him with a
form of protective custody in exchange for what appears to have been years of
cooperation.
Given the horrible events of 9/11, and the
political fallout, one doubts
that any federal agency would come forward on
its own to volunteer that the Flight 77 hijackers were the immediate target of
consensual monitoring operation conducted with the Saudis. It is also unlikely
that the FBI would of its own initiative reveal the target of its March 16,
2000 Carnivore operation was Al-Hazmi. However, we begin to see a larger
picture here, even if that particular tap was not directly prompted by the CIA
headquarters March 5 discovery of al-Hazmi’s entry, information it claims was
shared with the FBI.
***** INSERT BEGINS
*****
Published by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
Monday, November 12, 2001
Secret phone system operated by an al-Qaeda
cell out of Denver
The 800 number was used to thwart Saudi
attempts to intercept calls by the group to Britain
By Lou Kilzer
Scripps Howard News Service
DENVER
- One of Osama bin Laden's key al-Qaeda cells
used a phone system in Denver for secret communications between Saudi Arabia
and Britain in the 1990s, according to a bin Laden confidant based in London.
The system, using an MCI 800 number, was
established to thwart Saudi attempts to intercept messages, said Mohammed
al-Massari.
It incorporated toll-free lines established
for U.S. servicemen during the Gulf War, al-Massari said. The calls were placed
from Saudi Arabia and then transferred from Denver to Britain.
His estranged wife, former Denver resident
Lujain al-Iman, who also lives in London, confirmed his account. And Denver's
FBI office said it is aware of the al-Qaeda connection to Denver, but would not
elaborate.
Some still in Denver
Al-Iman, 35, said she set up the Denver-based
telephone system at her husband's request in 1994. She said she does not know
how
long the London al-Qaeda cell - the Advice and
Reformation Committee - used the phone account.
Some of those involved with the telephone
setup are still in the Denver area, al-Iman said, although she declined to
provide names.
Al-Massari, 55, a theoretical physicist and
former Saudi diplomat, was posted to Denver for 2 1/2 years as an educational
attache working with students. But his militant opposition to the House of Saud
got him recalled to Saudi Arabia in late 1986, where he taught at King Saud
University in Riyadh.
Al-Massari, during a phone interview from
London, said it took six weeks to get the telephone lines to work. Bin Laden
personally called him to thank him and to exchange small talk after the system
was activated, he said.
The Advice and Reformation Committee was
created as a propaganda organ by bin Laden in 1994. Its former leader, Khalid
al Fawwaz, is under indictment for conspiring to kill Americans between 1993
and 1998.
Bin Laden connections
Al Fawwaz purchased the satellite phone that
bin Laden later used to send him instructions concerning the bombing of two
U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, according to testimony at the trial of
al-Qaeda members accused in the bombings.
Al Fawwaz was a key connection between bin
Laden and al-Massari and his wife, al-Iman.
Al-Iman said she knew Al Fawwaz worked for bin
Laden when she set up the Denver phone lines, but she did not suspect that Al
Fawwaz might be involved in terror.
Finding a wife
Though he may have started out a human rights
activist, al-Massari has become increasingly militant in his support of bin
Laden's terrorism. He has publicly endorsed bin Laden's actions, including his
declaration of war on the United States and its citizens.
The Saudi government has pressed President
Bush to use his influence on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to have
al-Massari deported to Saudi Arabia, according to news reports.
Al-Iman grew up in Denver and, at 18, married
her first Arabic husband. The marriage lasted a year. She married her second
husband a year later, in 1987. That marriage lasted three years and produced a
son, Ali Atif.
In early 1991, al-Massari - then living back
in Saudi Arabia - called old friends in Denver to inquire about finding a wife.
Though he was 20 years her senior, al-Iman agreed to the union and they were
married that year.
Al-Massari and some like-minded men formed the
Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights in 1993, and met with several
American diplomats.
Soon after that, he was ensnared in a Saudi
dragnet and imprisoned for six months. He then escaped to Yemen and made his
way to London, she said.
Al-Iman had given birth to their son and
remained in Saudi Arabia. When she
tried to return to Denver, authorities said
her oldest son could not go with her.
Back in Denver, al-Iman established the Action
Committee for the Rights of Middle East Minorities to work in tandem with her
husband's committee in London. That's when al-Massari asked her to set up the
800 phone system, she said.
***** INSERT ENDS
*****
*******************
It is not entirely clear that a FISA warrant actually resulted in the aborted
use of the FBI’S Carnivore software in Denver on March 16. Documents that
appear to indicate this were leaked and released by the Bureau after 9/11.
However, it is particularly odd that a FOIA request would reveal that a recent
FBI national security intercept operation was botched due to a technical
problem. This event, if it occurred, would normally be treated as exempt from
FOIA release under the national security exemption. It is also worth noting the
e-mail indicates the intelligence “take” was not forwarded to analysts at the
FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) in Washington, DC, which seemingly
requested that tap.
The only thing that is clear from the April 5
2000 memo [reproduced below] and the Post report [reproduced below] that
followed on May 29, 2002 is that Spike Bowman was almost singularly criticized
for the alleged technical screw-up. The Carnivore incident also appears to have
been referenced in an October 9, 2002 AP story [reproduced below] after a House
committee examined an April 2000 FBI legal office memo outlining problems with
electronic surveillance. A Congressman is quoted as remarking, in a familiar
phrase, the FBI showed egregious “incompetence.”
**** INSERT ****
[ IMAGE OF 04/05/00 FBI MEMO AT LINK, BELOW]
EPIC Carnivore FOIA Page
washingtonpost.com
'Carnivore' Glitches Blamed for FBI Woes
Problems With E-Mail Surveillance Program
Led to Mishandling of al Qaeda Probe in 2000, Memo Says
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 29, 2002; Page A07
The FBI mishandled a surveillance operation
involving Osama bin Laden's terror network two years ago because of technical
problems with the controversial Carnivore e-mail program, part of a
"pattern" indicating that the FBI was unable to manage its
intelligence wiretaps, according to an internal bureau memorandum released
yesterday.
An attempt in March 2000 to secretly monitor
the e-mail of an unidentified suspect went awry when the Carnivore program
retrieved communications from other parties as well, according to the memo,
which was obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a
Washington-based advocacy group opposed to the technology. Carnivore, which has
been renamed DCS1000, is a computer program that allows investigators to
capture e-mails sent to and from criminal and terrorist suspects. But the newly
released memo indicates that, in at least one case, the program also retrieved
e-mails from innocent people not involved in the investigation.
The incident joined a rapidly growing list of
alleged FBI mistakes made before Sept. 11, including evidence that FBI
headquarters bungled the quest for a search warrant in the Zacarias Moussaoui
case and ignored pointed warnings from an Arizona field agent about terrorists
in flight training. It also invited fresh criticism of Carnivore, a program
already derided by civil libertarians, and cast doubt on repeated FBI
assurances that the program provides a "surgical" ability to grab
targeted e-mails out of cyberspace.
"Carnivore is a powerful but clumsy tool
that endangers the privacy of innocent American citizens," said David
Sobel, general counsel for EPIC, which obtained the memo through a lawsuit
filed under the Freedom of Information Act. "We have now learned that its
imprecision can also jeopardize important investigations, including those
involving terrorism."
FBI spokesman John Collingwood said yesterday that
the case was a rare mistake that resulted from technical problems encountered
by an Internet service provider, not by the FBI.
"This is an uncommon instance where a
surveillance tool, despite being tested and employed with the assistance of a
service provider, did not collect information as intended," Collingwood
said.
The one-page memo at issue, dated April 5,
2000, and sent via e-mail, was intended to outline the problems that had arisen
in a Denver terrorism case for Marion "Spike" Bowman, the FBI's
associate general counsel for national security. Yesterday, Bowman declined to
comment and authorities declined to identify the memo's author or provide
further details about the case.
The probe involved the FBI team that
investigates suspected operatives of the al Qaeda network. It is known as the
Usama bin Laden, or UBL, unit for the agency's spelling of the al Qaeda
leader's name. The same unit has come under congressional scrutiny in recent
weeks over its role in shelving a July 2001 memo from Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth
Williams, who had suggested that al Qaeda members might be infiltrating
aviation schools and requested that the FBI canvass them for Middle Easterners.
In the latest case to come to light, the UBL
unit acquired in March 2000 a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) for use against a suspect in an investigation based in
The names of the suspect and all others in the
memo, except for Bowman's, were redacted from the copy provided to EPIC.
The memo says that on March 16, 2000, the
Carnivore "software was turned on and did not work properly,"
capturing e-mails involving both the target and others unconnected to the case.
The memo goes on to say that "the FBI technical person was apparently
so upset that he destroyed all the E-Mail take, including the take" from
the target. Collingwood, the FBI spokesman, said that the memo is incorrect and
that the e-mails gathered in the operation were kept and remain under seal in
the court that administers secret wiretaps. [emphasis added]
The memo makes clear that the Justice
Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), which oversees
FISA warrants, was enraged by the blunders in the case, in part because the
Justice Department office was allegedly not told that Carnivore was considered
experimental at the time. Referring to an official at OIPR, the memo's author
says: "[To] state that she is unhappy with [the International Terrorism
Operations Section] and the UBL Unit would be an understatement of incredible
proportions."
The memo also refers to an electronic
communication outlining other "FISA mistakes" and alleges "a
pattern of occurrences which indicate to OIPR an inability on the part of the
FBI to manage its FISAs."
[emphasis added]
One law enforcement official said last night
that the passage may be referring to the ongoing problems with the affidavits
submitted by the FBI to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which
approves surveillance requests. The court barred one FBI agent from submitting
affidavits in late 2000 because of misrepresentations, and a broad review found
similar problems in other cases, sources said.
The FBI has been using the Carnivore system
for almost three years, subject to court authorization, to tap into Internet
communications, to identify e-mail
writers online and to record the contents of messages. It does so by capturing
"packets" of information containing those details.
Civil liberties advocates and some lawmakers
have expressed concerns because the system could scan private communication on
the legal activities of people other than those under investigation. But agency
officials have said repeatedly in response to criticism that the system poses
no threat to privacy because it can take narrow, targeted slices of
communication.
That's what FBI officials told Congress in the
summer of 2000, only a few months after the botched surveillance effort in the
Denver case. Shortly before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an FBI spokesman
said the agency rarely used Carnivore because Internet service providers had
become so adept at meeting the technical demands of approved surveillance of
suspects' Internet traffic. The agency said it had used Carnivore only twice
from January through mid- August .
Since then, the agency has repeatedly declined
to discuss the number of times the system has been used in recent months,
saying that the records of Carnivore's use are exempt from disclosure laws
[emphases added.]
Staff writer Robert O'Harrow Jr.
contributed to this report.
###
### ###
By
Ted Bridis Associated Press Writer Wednesday, October 9, 2002; 4:50 PM
WASHINGTON -- FBI agents illegally videotaped
suspects, intercepted e-mails without court permission and recorded the wrong
phone conversations during sensitive terrorism and espionage investigations,
according to an internal memorandum detailing serious lapses inside the FBI
more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The blunders - roughly 15 over the first three
months of 2000 – were never made public but garnered the attention of the
"highest levels of management" inside FBI, said the memo written by
senior bureau lawyers and obtained by The Associated Press.
Lawmakers reviewing FBI missteps preceding the
terror attacks expressed surprise Wednesday at the extent of errors detailed in
the memo, which focused on sensitive cases requiring warrants under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The mistakes extend beyond those criticized in
a rare public decision this summer by the secretive U.S. court that oversees
the surveillance warrants.
That court admonished the FBI for providing
inaccurate information in warrant applications.
The April 2000 memo - marked
"immediate" and classified as "secret" -describes different
problems from those cited by the court. It describes agents conducting
unauthorized searches, writing warrants with wrong addresses and allowing
"overruns" of electronic surveillance operations beyond their legal deadline.
"The level of incompetence here is
egregious," said Rep. William D. Delahunt, D-Mass., a member of the House
Judiciary Committee who obtained the memo from the FBI and provided it to
AP.[...]
[Fair use doctrine applies to all excerpts
above]
**** INSERT ENDS ****
A key element of the April 5, 2000 FBI memo is controverted by Eggan’s Washington Post report.
This sheds some doubt on the veracity of the FBI document and the Bureau's
motives in releasing the memo when and in the fashion it did. Further, the memo
not made public until months after 9/11 under the guise of a FOIA release that
came at a time the FBI was under intense Congressional scrutiny. It is
significant that, according to the Post of March 29 2002, these taps were not
in fact erased, but the records of the Carnivore intercepts were instead
delivered to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, where
they are supposedly preserved today under lock and key. Why the memo indicates
the records were erased has not been publicly explained.
Circumstantially, the indicated timing of the
FBI’s wiretap seems to buttress the CIA's claim it notified the Bureau's CTC
liaison that al-Hazmi’s arrival was reported by a foreign post cable on March
5.
The timing of the Carnivore intercept may just
be an interesting coincidence – it appears to have been technically flawed in
some way that might make forensic analysis of the contents difficult. There is
no evidence that the Congressional Inquiry took any particular notice of that
event. If, indeed, the Carnivore intercept was directed at al-Hazmi, it sorely
undermines the FBI’s version of events -- that the Bureau knew nothing and,
thus, did nothing until late summer 2001 to pursue key al-Qaeda operative
roaming around loose inside the United States. At the very least, it shows the
extraordinary lengths the Bureau went to as it tried to contain damage after
9/11, and to pin responsibility for a long line of FISA problems on a handful
of hapless middle managers.
***************
Since 1978, FISA warrants have been mandatory whenever the USG
wants to surveil a terrorist or foreign agent inside the US. While FISA
warrants were good for only 45 days before the Patriot Act extended that, there
was no limit on renewals. But, renewals had to be (and still must be) approved
by the FISC. [See Appendix A, FISA Act]
There may indeed be a record of FISA obtained
communications about al-Hazmi held under guard at the FISC. If there is, that
information was withheld from Congressional investigators, as it does not
appear on the record. The data may have been so corrupted with large amounts of
extraneous material that it could not be easily identified. If this was done
intentionally, withholding of evidence from an investigative body would amount
to a crime under the federal obstruction of justice statute.
If, on the other hand, there were no warrants,
but electronic or physical surveillance was actually carrried out inside the US
against the 9/11 hijackers – even if this revealed nothing about their plans
– federal officers committed another set of crimes, including violations of the
1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Furthermore, any assistance to or facilitation
of the hijackers without the express authorization of the Attorney General and
Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation – even if there was
consensual monitoring -- would be a major felony punishable under the1996 Antiterrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act and under criminal conspiracy statutes.
There is no public record of or reference to
applications for FISA warrant applications until late in the summer of 2001 to
locate or observe the specific, named hijackers members who Congress
identified. Nevertheless, the Congressional Joint report reveals there were
numerous FISA warrants for other al-Qaeda-related investigations ongoing during
2000 and 2001. A significant number of these warrants were actually allowed to
expire in 2000, while the Bureau was embroiled in a scandal involving
falsification of warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence court. [Sec.
1, Finding 12, p. 96] The Inquiry received conflicting information about the
number of al-Qaeda-related FISA investigations ongoing in 2001. That ranged
from zero cases reported by an FBI manager to a number that, curiously,
remained classified at page 97 in the public version of the 9/11 report.
The OIPR official who could recall active FISA
cases in 2001, nonetheless, stated that two-thirds of these orders were allowed
to expire that year [Ibid., p. 97]
The congressional Joint Inquiry staff director
concluded in her October 8, 2002 statement that the inadequate joint CIA-FBI
efforts directed at al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar following the Malaysia meeting were
not actually FISA matters at all, although they had been treated by both
agencies as if they were. Similarly, according to Ms. Hill, the investigative
problems with “the Wall” during the summer of 2001, FISA requirements did not,
in fact, apply to the investigation being conducted at that time. [http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/100802hill.html
]
There is a discernable implication that if
there had been any FISA warrants contemplated, they would have been among those
derailed in early 2000. It can also be inferred that earlier warrants likely
were allowed to expire. Indeed, the record of the Congressional Inquiry
contains no evidence that a FISA warrant was ever issued specifically for the
9/11 hijackers. Had there been such a warrant request by the FBI or CIA, no one
could plausibly claim that the hijackers entered the US undetected or without
interest. Similarly, there is no record of any authorization for consensual
monitoring involving the provision of material support to the hijackers. The
same implications would apply to such authorizations as do for FISA warrants.
***************
The best evidence indicates, therefore, that
US intelligence indeed knew about al-Hazmi and al-Midhar a long time before
9/11, and US intelligence in conjunction with foreign allied intelligence
agencies “ran” them after their entry. In mid-summer, 2001 US intelligence
chiefs seem to become aware that something had gone alarmingly wrong with the
operation. Nonetheless, the efforts of FBI field office investigators to obtain
warrants to locate suspected terrorists appear to have been thwarted. Along the
way to 9/11, US officials obstructed justice and acted with reckless disregard
for public safety.
Going back to early 1999, there was a US
intelligence tap on the phone of al-Midhar's father in law who ran the al-Qaeda
"switchboard" in Yemen picked up reference to “Nawaf al-Midhar”. One
account identified that as an FBI wiretap, but communications abroad would not
have required a warrant. However, credible reports place the pair in San Diego
that December. [Newsweek, "The
Hijackers We Let Escape" , June 5, 2002]. If that were indeed the case
that the pair were in the US at the time their call to Yemen were intercepted,
the FBI would have needed a FISA warrant to monitor that call. That would
explain why the whereabouts of the pair at the end of 1999 has been obscured.
As a result of intercepts from that tap, the pair was tracked as they traveled
in December to Malaysia, where they were observed meeting with top-level
al-Qaeda operations directors.
The CIA employed eight foreign stations and a
half dozen allied intelligence agencies to surveil that summit. The pair
returned to the US on the same January 15 2000 flight from Bangkok after
accompanying a top al-Qaeda planner, "Khallad" bin Attash, to another
country following the meeting. The CIA claims it didn't know about al-Midhar's
return until March 5, and wasn't aware that al-Mihdhar was on the same flight
until August 2001, even though the Agency had a copy of his passport with a
valid US multiple-entry visa, and says it searched in Thailand for weeks for
him after the January meeting.
In view of the Joint Inquiry revelations about
the pair's central role in leading US intelligence to the Malaysia surveillance
operation, the initial Agency assertions that the pair weren't important enough
to keep track of just do not wash. They were very important indeed - they had
led US intelligence to a major al-Qaeda meeting, where reportedly the Cole
attack and the 9/11 operation were both planned. In addition, the pair was
observed as they traveled together on their way to Thailand after the meeting.
It simply strains credibility that the CIA lost track of the pair, and didn't
think to look for them inside the US. But, let's put that aside for a moment.
Assume the basic account provided by the US officials is correct. When the CIA became aware (it is claimed) on March 5 of al-Hazmi's arrival, the FBI liaison at CTC was notified. That certainly shows that the event was not simply overlooked by the CIA. Given what was known by both agencies about the pair and events surrounding the al-Qaeda summit, a FISA warrant should have been sought to track down the pair. There is no question about that. For the officers to have failed to send this information up the chain of command would have been dereliction of duty of the most severe sort. What then happened to that information, after it reached the Directors' offices, is a differen