Billy House
Phoenix FBI agent linked bin Laden to flight schools
Thu Jul 24 20:33:24 2003
208.152.73.215

Phoenix FBI agent linked bin Laden to flight schools

Billy House
Republic Washington Bureau
Jul. 24, 2003 12:00 AM
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0724fbimemo24.html

WASHINGTON - Two months before Sept. 11, 2001, a Phoenix FBI agent specifically accused Osama bin Laden of using flight schools in Arizona and elsewhere in the United States to train "a cadre of individuals" to carry out aviation terrorism, according to a congressional report to be released today.

"The purpose of this communication," Agent Kenneth Williams wrote in a memo, "is to advise the bureau (headquarters) and New York of the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation universities and colleges."

Williams wrote that his investigations in Arizona "give reason to believe that a coordinated effort is under way to establish a cadre of individuals who will one day be working in the civil aviation community around the world."

He concluded, "The individuals will be in a position in the future to conduct terror activity against civil aviation targets."

Excerpts of Williams' eight-page memo were provided to The Arizona Republic on Wednesday by an FBI source.

But Williams' warnings July 10, 2001, were ignored by FBI higher-ups until after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Members of Congress and FBI Director Robert Mueller have said that what happened to the "Phoenix Memo" symbolizes what was wrong with U.S. intelligence coordination and analysis before the attacks.

Until now, they have made little mention of the memo's specific references to bin Laden in their general descriptions of the document's contents.

The memo does not offer specific dates for any possible terrorist attack.

Long-awaited report

Today, the memo is to be released as part of an almost 900-page report compiled by a joint House-Senate intelligence committee that investigated U.S. intelligence lapses before Sept. 11, 2001. Significant amounts of the FBI memo, including nearly all names, are blacked out, or redacted.

The memo is titled "Zakaria Mustapha Soubra: IT-OTHER," identifying by name a Lebanese student attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott who was an original focus of Williams' investigations. A synopsis line below the title is blacked out.

Williams identifies several other Middle Eastern men who apparently were students at either Embry-Riddle or other Arizona flight schools at the time, so many that Williams believed it to be an inordinate amount. But those names are blacked out. In fact, one page of the memo containing just a list of names is entirely redacted.

FBI officials previously have said they would not release the names of individuals appearing on the memo who remain under investigation.

Williams' memo discusses the existence of a "fatwah," which he explains "is a jihad against the U.S. and British government, armies, interests, airports. . . . "

He then outlines some recommendations for his superiors.

"Phoenix believes that the FBI should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities/colleges around the country. FBI field offices with these types of schools in their area should establish appropriate liaison," Williams wrote.

"FBIHQ should discuss this matter with other elements of the U.S. intelligence community for any information that supports Phoenix's suspicions."

He added, "FBIHQ should consider seeking the necessary authority to obtain visa information from the USDOS (U.S. Department of State) on individuals obtaining visas to attend these types of schools and notify the appropriate FBI field office when these individuals are scheduled to arrive in their area of responsibility."

The memo states that Williams' conclusions were based on the Soubra investigation and other Phoenix-based probes. But details of those other investigations are blacked out from the version of the memo to be released today. Williams' investigation of Soubra, according to the memo, began on April 17, 2000.

Plot hard to grasp

Testifying last September before the congressional committee, the inquiry's lead investigator, Eleanor Hill, explained that one of the students identified by Williams has since been connected to Hani Hanjour, who flew a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon.

Hill testified there are "significant questions" about whether some of the Sept. 11 hijackers may have come to the FBI's attention before the attacks had Williams' memo not been ignored by FBI officials in Washington, D.C., and New York.

Soubra, 27, who is the only person other than bin Laden identified in the memo, has since been deported for a visa violation but has never been charged with a criminal offense.

He was not arrested immediately after the attacks. Instead, he was placed on the government's terrorism "watch list" and kept under surveillance until May 23, 2002, for the immigration violation. Because he had dropped a class, he fell below the minimum number of courses required under his student visa.

Before his deportation, Soubra was interrogated repeatedly. He spent a year in detention in Florence and was subjected to closed hearings in Immigration Court.

Although he is implicated in Williams' memo, Soubra says he condemns al-Qaida, denies any involvement in terrorism and claimed in a recent telephone interview from Beirut that "paranoid" FBI agents ruined his life with their unfounded suspicions.

Russ Adler, director of the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals chapter in Florida, and an executive director of a terrorism training and consulting company, said Williams' memo and conclusions should have carried great weight with the FBI.

He said the new details of the memo show how "it's almost criminal to not have been prepared (for Sept. 11), to not follow up; it's negligence at headquarters."

But Steven Emerson, director of the Investigative Project, an organization dedicated to investigations of Islamic terrorism, offers a more sympathetic view.

"What this (memo) is going to show is that the FBI was circling around the 9/11 plot or conspirators but couldn't identify it," he said.

Emerson said U.S. intelligence officials had never seen such a monumental conspiracy, so they failed to grasp it.

"Ken Williams was a visionary," he added. "He understood what the future held."

Staff reporter Dennis Wagner contributed to this article.
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